If they are going to have ‘N’ for novice drivers maybe they should think about a ‘W’ plate for all the w@n*er drivers out there.

Why not enforce the points system that’s already in place instead of adding to it. The amount of drivers using mobiles is ridiculous.

Change whatever they want but with the lack of enforcement it won’t make a blind bit of difference. Money would be much better spend on driver education and re-education, I mean we still don’t teach anyone how to drive on a motorway before they get their full licence!!

Has there ever been a study that shows that even displaying an L plate contributes in any way to road safety? In my experience of driving a car with L plates, as a driving instructor, it has the opposite effect. People become very aggressive and perform dangerous manouvers in an attempt to overtake. That’s not only while a learner is at the wheel either by the way. That’s the response I get from my fellow motorists while I am driving a car displaying L plates.

I suspect it’s one of those things, like the push-pull steering method, where the efficacy is assumed. My gut feeling is that N plates are a bad idea.

On Oz they issue double penalty points on bank holidays…. a great idea…. maybe even bring in double penalty points from 18:00 Sat to 08:00 Sunday as so many crashes seem to happen in this time slot.

Where’s the logic? I half agree with those on learner permits if driving on their own etc, but for newly qualified drivers that would be a bit of a joke. If you pass your driving test you should be treated equally. What I would agree with is a more difficult test in the first place to ensure that people can actually drive, the amount of mothers dropping their kids to school this morning who jam on the breaks in the middle of the road to let them out – equally as dangerous tto other road users as ‘newly qualified drivers’

Maybe if they stop ya driving out of a driving test centre after you have failed!

Part of the ‘blame’ is an incomplete system of teaching people how to drive. I passed my test on Monday, went through the 12 ADI, RSA lessons.

I was never shown how to reverse into a parking spot, how to drive at night, how to drive on a motorway.

My L plates are down, my pink licence is in the post, and I’m terrified of the prospect of being out there without the protecting of my L plates.

The system needs an overhaul! Nobody is taught how to be a bad driver.

Just one more person in the left lane before a roundabout and end up turning right…. In what world would it make sense to be in a left lane to turn right… Drives me crazy!

No. How about penalties for all the supposed ‘qualified’ drivers who dont know what an indicator is!!!??? Hhhmmmm

In my opinion, newly qualified drivers are the most cautious on the roads. If they tested everyone maybe once every 10 years, we might be better off as a whole. But not charging €85. That’s way too much.

a learner driver should get instant points for not being able to put up an “L” plate correctly, the amount of L plates you see around upside down or sideways is hilarious. if you can’t put a simple sticker on, you have no hope of passing your driving test!

it’s the very old generation who are more dangerous…….

look we were all learners once and made our fair share of mistakes

Typical of this Government targeting the vulnerable again. Learner drivers are more careful than the rest of us because of the fact they are only learning. They already have to pay out a massive amount for insurance.

I wish someone would give points to or even better take the 87 year old lady off the road who crushed my niece on a pedestrian crossing as she drove right through it as she said she did see my niece
Mind you she wasn’t taken off the road 6 months before when she hit the child either

I’m a car driver as well as a biker so I get to see both sides of Irish road users, this will sound racist and sexist but im far from it. younger girls f@#*ING texting more than once has nearly hit me and as for our coloured friends they haven’t a clue what an indicator is for.

I was talking to a woman last night who is in her 40s and driving a number of years and she was saying that she stays on the inside lane on roundabouts because she really does not know what lane she should be in and she lives in a town where there is nothing but roundabouts Bad Habits….

I would suggest that a lot of older drivers who have licences for years are far more careless than new drivers. Perhaps whoever dreamed up this stupid idea would turn their attention to the older drivers and see how popular a retest for those who have not been tested for 10 years would go down; they’d get short shift . Young people have enough bloody pressure without this ridiculous suggestion. I’m an older driver and like most older drivers I would probably fail the driving test if I was asked to do it tomorrow.

The RSA is a quango who’s expense we could do without at the moment….
What next – the government are going to issues guidelines on how to use a knife and fork safely?

There go the muppets,picking on the wrong people……..AGAIN!They just have NO idea.Those on full licences,who get caught breaking the law/limit should be punished more harshly,as they should know better.Generally,it is young drivers who get picked on,why not do it the right way,and punish all drivers on the same basis,until they get caught repeatedly.Full licence drivers who are caught more than three times breaking the law should be given learner permits,simple.REALLY F……ING SIMPLE.But no,it will never happen,it’s too correct a fashion of punishment.

Used to drive professionally in Europe. When working in Ireland I was notching up almost 3000 kms per week professionally and maybe 1000 personally. Worked also as a transport manager so know very much about the ins and outs of the sector. First company i worked for in Ireland for over 7 years was a UK one and strict to the letter of the law on european driving legislation and local laws. Great grounding/discipline on how to do things right. I never had a problem with paying slightly higher car insurance as statistically the more you drive, the higher your chances of being involved in an accident etc whether it’s your fault or not. (so lets not mention the whole male/female insurance thing currently causing uproar) As a driver with an impeccable record in the 30 plus countries I’ve driven in, there are pros and cons in every country’s system. The point is, whether you agree with the system or not, there should be respect for the law. And there should be enforcement of the law. I have never been breath tested in Ireland. I find it astonishing with the miles I was clocking up, with maybe up to 63 lives on my coach, I was never once stopped in Ireland. Just waved through every checkpoint by the guards. Enforcement in Ireland does happen, it’s just a bit too mild and I personally have never experienced it. I would be so ashamed of myself if I ever received points or even a parking fine.

I do NOT agree with penalising “Novice drivers” more. It must be said that passing a driving test and being able to drive are completely different things, there is no test for driving on ice, heavy rain, blinding sun, known hazards (sudden obsticle, people not dimming lights at night, loose stones on a newly surfaced road….) Tackle this issue and you will see improvements. I also agree that there are people out there (hesitant to say a generation, but definately an age group) who do not know half the rules of the road including roundabouts, indicating and illogical speeds on a main (good) road. We do tend to point to the younger generation as the problem but this is not always the case. It comes down to basic numbers : in the celtic years, there were more young drivers crasing but this was also as a result of there being more NUMBERS of young drivers on the road cause they were working etc and had to drive so the laws of probability in numbers kicked in and suddenly “all young drivers are bad drivers” Having been blown off the road and nearly killed by an 80 odd year old driving straight out onto a main road from a bye road without looking and stopping almost 10 years ago, i am sure i was classed as a statistic of a young driver having crashed, yet it was nothing to do with me so numbers are often misleading!! Reinvent the wheel for testing and treat everyone equally and we will have results!

As a cautious learner driver observing people on the road, every rule infraction i see is not by people with L plates on their car and it is frighteningly regular.I’m talking about every two minutes between illegal/dangerous parking, mobile phone usage,iPad usage in slow moving traffic, looking in the glove box while travelling at 50km in a city centre…it’s endless.Instead of running out of ideas and coming up with this nonsense, they should re-test people either after a certain amount of years or when you reach a certain age. There’s some very aged people out there who should not be driving.

It’s hard to know whether it’s justified. Do statistics exist showing hard evidence that L drivers are the cause of a proportion of accidents higher than all other groups ? If not then it can’t be justified.

Leave the young alone – they are been screwed enough with insurance, tax etc etc!

I love reading threads like this where people come on and complain about other people.

Perhaps a little acknowledgement that all of us probably have some bad driving habits or do things that we shouldn’t might be called for as opposed to assuming that we are perfect drivers and everybody else is not. A little humility like that might make us realise that demonising one section of road users (be it young people, women, foreigners or whatever) is completely wrong.

Generalisations have no place in road safety. Blunt instruments like this proposal will do nothing to improve the safety on our roads.

There are some poor elderly people out there that should not be on the road at all and will cause an accident, I think they should have regular driving tests

Anyone coming back to driving after being on a driving ban should have a letter too, P or W would seem appropriate.

The driver education system should be totally revamped! Learner drivers can do all of their lessons on nice sunny days (fine, they are rare in Ireland!) and have no guided experience driving in adverse conditions. They are apparently not told what different lanes are for on the road, eg. outside lane for overtaking not cruising in! And then the day they pass their test they are given full, unrestricted, unaccompanied access to the motorway which up until then they have not been allowed near!

increase the fines for each offence, double them at least. you will find people will pay a lot more attention to road rules then

The bunch that need to be singled out is professional drivers hanging off a mobile phone.

disagree with singling out newly qualified drivers, thats just discrimination, i past my test in 1977 and have never had so much as a parking fine, why because i was taught to drive by a former police driving instructor, i did my advanced driving test a year later and re sat the a.d.t. every 10 yrs or so, that was in the u.k.. driving here in ireland is something different, the standard of driving in general is poor, many older drivers, those in the late 30 to 50 age bracket may never have had a proper lesson, never mind pass a test, i see drivers on the phone, the laptop, leaning over to get something from the glovebox, turning to face the back of the car to talk to someone, even swapping seats with the rear passenger whilst driving on the m7. there are children bouncing up and down on the back seats, sitting on their mothers knees in the front, standing up to look out of the sun roof, leaning out of the windows, not a seat belt or safety/booster seat in sight, iv’e seen young lads standing up to drive big farm machines for miles along the roads, i’ve been over taken in a no overtaking zone, on the approach to a pedestrian crossing, even at the entrance to a roundabout, talking of roundabouts, why do the N.R..A bother with them?, most ‘drivers’ don’t know how to approach them or which lane to use, as for ‘mini roundabouts’ they just drive straight across them, traffic lights have no meaning for some as do parking restrictions, all in all a total lack of driver education and thought for other road users is the biggest problem on Irish roads, as for ‘N’ plates, the guards do nothing about not showing ‘ L’ plates so i dont see much changing there.

When you finish reading this, please go out and see if all your lights are working. and Don’t forget to turn off your front fog lights after.

Yet again the learner drivers targeted- getting damn well sick of it now. it’s the idiots that overtake us on bends and with cars coming that are dangerous!! Just because we do the speed limit they drive up ur backside to try and intimidate you.ggrrrrr

Some people just aren’t very good at driving, no matter whether they are novices or not.
Keep left unless overtaking everyone.

Try convincing the invincible young men in their mammies cars.

It always amazes me how these sweeping “new laws” can be thought up and implemented almost overnight. Usually ones that affect the smallest, weakness and generally most voiceless demographic can be brought in quick as lightening, without any consultation, rationalization or debate. Varadkar, no doubt will be distancing himself from this as always wants to been seen as the good boy in the class. However, If we want to change politicians pensions, or alter any part of the Croke Park agreement, it’s “NO WAY”, these laws/contracts are untouchable! We we all learner drivers once…put yourself back there and remember how it felt!

Bad habits should be targeted why not introdude measures where after 10 years you have to do some sort of renewal testtake the pressure off the young people of Ireland for a change !

What’s the point no body will put them up no enforcement , how many no Irish drivers have you seen with l plates , kids jumping all around the car no seat belts ,, no enforcement what so ever ,,, how many east European drivers killed on Irish roads because they know they will get away with it

It’s not novice drivers that are the problem. It’s people who are too comfortable and don’t give a shit. Especially people on mobile phones. (Although eating and smoking while driving can be just as dangerous)

Road Safety Authority is a quango and should be scrapted

I posted I dont know, as I feel Ill informed, I have never heard the statistics on novice drivers, how many accidents do they cause? how many are serious? how many are fatal? we hear that they are the most likely and this makes sense to us, but is it true? show me the statics!!

Ps a lot of the little boy racers and girl racers actually have full licences and are not novice drivers.

What a load of crap. As if learning to drive wasn’t stressful enough.

I fully agree with it for Learner Drivers. There should be an instant 6 month ban for learners who drive around unaccompanied, it’s go to the stage that it’s ridiculous and seriously dangerous and the Gardaí do sweet FA about it.

The “Novice” driver thing is utter nonsense though, if you have passed your test then it means that you have the required skills and are a competent driver. It’s the people that have been driving for years that have the bad habits; maybe they should get an O plate for “Old”?

the Garda should patrol. the motor ways more. but they just. sit on the. slip road trying. to catch you. speeding they don’t. see. the dangerous drivers put it’s easy work and money.

It appears that younger drivers are to only be entitled to presumption of innocence until proven guilty once they are up in court. Outside of court it’s to be the other way around if that policy is put in place. A far fairer approach would be to make points doublee for repeat of the same offence. Eg speeding – 2 points. Speeding again? 4 points. Again? 8 points – Off the road.

Was on the motorway the other day driving along at 140 when a garda car came up behind me. I pulled over to the middle lane, and it passed me by. We then both caught up with some young, stupid one driving her Nissan Micra in the “fast lane” at 80kmp/h.

The Garda drove right up her ar$e for a minute, and she didn’t realise she had to move over – no observation, no awareness of the rules of the road, etc. Eventually the garda put the blues on and siren, and she swerved over. As I was passing her, I leant on the horn. She started crying – it made my day.

We are becoming a nanny sate. #It’sAJoke

You should try the roads of west Clare !
Often been behind 10/15 cars as an old guy/woman dawdle ing at 40/50 klm per hour – impossible to pass out !

Any chance of providing us with accident statistics comparing new drivers to those qualified years?

Young drivers are a red herring in this debate: learner drivers are of all ages from seventeen up. This is about whether drivers who have yet to prove their competency via a standardised test should be punished more harshly. I’m in favour of this. Driving is a privilege, not a right. If you can’t prove that you’re capable of safely operating a motor vehicle on public roads, you shouldn’t be doing so.

No!!!!! I know full licence drivers who are wayyyy more dangerous on the roads and pay much less attention if anything with the new rule of them having to take 12 lessons before they even start to drive they are even safer!!! Same rules should apply to L plates and full licence drivers if you do nothing wrong and dont speed you have nothing to worry about!!!!

That’s a ridiculous idea, of course learner drivers make the odd mistake, how is banning someone who hasn’t learnt properly yet going to help? A far better idea would be to make all the people who didn’t have to sit a theory test, sit one. If you sit at a junction and watch the drivers, it’s usually the older drivers (and I mean over 35) who don’t seem to know the rules of the road, or don’t care about them anyway.

It’s not fair to punish learner drivers for the mistakes of so-called “experienced” drivers. As per usual, instead of actually enforcing the law, a blanket target of one particular group is the only answer.

Do you not think it will be for the benefit if ALL drivers in the long run if they are in the habit of driving properly and with due care?
Even if this saves just 1 life in the future then it has been worth it. Younger drivers don’t realise the severity and carnage cars can actually cause.
Granted older drivers are set in their ways, however it doesn’t make it correct, if we can teach the future generations to drive properly and even if this means keeping them under a strict lock and key for a couple of years then I fully support it

Learner drivers shouldn’t be on the road in the first place

how does this make more money for the government?