This was gobsmacking to read as to how difficult it is to get a licence in South Africa. Some quotes:
K53 method of defensive driving. Herein lies a problem, for the K53 method resembles normal driving about as much as Snoop Dogg resembles Perry Como.
But not the only problem. Securing a South African driver’s license is not as simple as passing the K53 test, which is not simple at all. It also requires that one apply for the license, a bureaucratic process so daunting that it set off riots this year. It necessitates eye examinations before applying for a license and before the road test — and all over again, should one fail. It often demands that one game the driving examiner, who may wish to flunk the hapless applicant to meet the day’s failure quota.
It is helpful to learn South Africa’s extensive and sometimes charming traffic code, which sometimes rates children between 6 and 13 as one-third of a passenger and includes a road sign that depicts a stick-figure man astride an ostrich.
If one does all this, one can proceed to take the K53, and flunk on the merits. For the K53 is just part of the Catch-22 that faces every aspiring motorist here: To drive legally, one very sensibly needs a license. Except that licenses often seem impossible to get.
All right, not impossible. They are nevertheless very difficult. In a two-year period that ended in July, the national transport ministry says, 1.5 million people applied for driver’s licenses. Fewer than 4 in 10 actually received them.
Based on Britain’s national driving exam, the K53 effectively requires an applicant to imagine that he is driving a live claymore mine under assault by guerrillas in bumper cars.
Even though the K53 method has been used for a dozen years — or perhaps because so few drivers have obtained licenses — traffic accidents and deaths are rising fast, to 15,400 fatalities last year, up nearly 9 percent from 2005. The fatality rate per mile traveled, the best measure of road safety, is five times that in the United States, which is in turn higher than in most developed nations.
License applicants are supposed to apply by telephone, which has proven less than successful. “I have attempted to call the call center — in quick succession — 271 times. Not joking,” one miserable soul wrote
Among those caught in the act is the speaker of the South African Parliament, Baleka Mbete-Kgositsile, nabbed in 1997, but not prosecuted, for procuring a phony license from a government testing center.
Ms. Mbete had a ready explanation. She was, she said, too busy to stand in line.
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