Cullen is a South African driving instructor. You would drink, too. His job is to teach people how to pass the driver’s-license examination, a trial of the country’s famed K-53 Method of defensive driving. Herein lies a problem, for the K-53 Method resembles normal driving about as much as Eminem resembles the late Perry Como.
Securing a driver’s license here is not as simple as passing the K-53, which is not simple at all. It also requires that one apply for the license, a bureaucratic process so daunting that it literally triggered 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 in order to meet the day’s failure quota.
It is helpful to learn South Africa’s extensive and sometimes charming traffic code, which rates children from ages 6 to 13 as one-third of a passenger and includes a road sign that depicts a stick-figure man astride an ostrich.
Based on Britain’s national driving exam, the K-53 effectively requires an applicant to imagine that he is driving a live Claymore mine under assault by guerrillas in bumper cars. The handbrake must be silently engaged at all stops (ratchet-clicking is strictly forbidden) and all mirrors must be checked every seven seconds. Points are deducted for glancing at the gearshift, driving too slow, failing to ensure that headlamps and tail lamps are securely attached, failing to check the pressure on the clutch pedal, failing to look beneath the car for leaks and several dozen other sins.
How to keep native people from getting a license.
This sounds like a good idea. We should try it here in the US.
Wow, what would a failure quota do for US traffic. It would be interesting to see statistics on what their crazy licensing system has done for road safety. Of course I have absolutely no doubt that, were it more difficult to get a license in the states, just as many people would drive – just more would drive illegally.
dunno… If i was driving a live claymore mine, I’d do my best to run into other cars and door pedestrians like a real-life GTA
As a South African, and someone who passes first time in 2002.
(In SA passing first time is something to brag about…)
It is a little crazy, but we do not know any better.
You first have to walk up to the car with the examiner.
You will then say “There are no obstruction under or around the vehicle.”
You then tell the examiner that you have checked and there is a spare wheel, spanner and jack in the boot.
You then get into the car, invite the examiner to get into the car.
Put you seat belt on, tell the examiner that you are doing it, and tell him that he also has to put on his seat belt.
You then do a yard test, which is parallel parking, ally docking, and a three point turn.
They you get to the road test, where you drive wherever the examiner tells you to go. (Left here, right here)
It is not true that you have to check all mirrors every 7 seconds. You need to check the middle (overhead) mirror once every eight to ten seconds as long as your speed is constant and you do not cross any roads.
If you come to a cross road you are required to do what is called a five point check…
Look over your left shoulder, check the left rear view mirror, check the overhead mirror, check your right rear view mirror, look over your right shoulder.
You are required to check the overhead mirror before accelerating or decelerating at any road.
If you would like to turn or change lanes to the right for instance you are required only to do a four point check…
look in the left rear view mirror, check the over head mirror, check the right mirror, look over your right shoulder.
You can then indicate your turn (put the flicker on).
you are required to perform the four point check once more before turning.
If you are coming to a stop you are required to remain in the current gear until you have completely stopped. You can then pull up the hand break (without making a noise) and then putting the gearbox into neutral. When pulling away, if the car roles backward you will fail on the spot.
Hope you enjoyed reading my little comment… but you must remember… South Africans are Shit drivers… they don’t know what they are doing… come and drive through Johannesburg, you’ll see what I mean…
I don’t know if K-53 is enough for them…
About the same everywhere in the world, from what I’ve seen. Went to Puerto Vallarta once. Got into a taxi at the airport, then shot at top speed down the just-barely-wider-than-the-car center lane, inches away from the car in front, as the car skidded (I could hear it) around curves. No seat belts so we were sliding back and forth on the bench seats. Since it was nearly dark, the driver flipped on the lights which caused smoke to billow from something shorting out in the dash. He turned the lights off (ie, drove in the dark) and never slowed down while coughing heavily from the smoke.
It would never work in the US.
Thousands of Americans would never let the lack of a valid driver’s license, or a suspended license, prevent them from actually driving.
Many celebrities demonstrate this on a daily basis.
Driving is a God-given right!
It’s what our fore-fathers fought for in Vietnam!
Chuck
It is comments like that, that make me glad I am not an American…
🙂
@#8 Jonathan Peel
He was being facetious, Jonathan.
Maybe we would have better drivers in the US if some of these requirements were applied here as well. Driving tests in the US are a farce.
In the United States there are more than 40,000 fatalities due to car accidents each year. That’s about five people killed each single day. Or about 1/10 of a person per State per day. My point? Don’t drive out of state.
Speaking as a person with a commercial drivers license I have to agree getting an auto license in the United States is a joke. It might help if you had to pass an IQ test first.
Driving around Las Vegas where I live is like driving in a foreign country. Green and yellow lights mean exactly the same thing. Turning red means if the guy in front of you (who couldn’t imagine stopping on the yellow) slowed you down enough so you’re poking along at the speed limit you have plenty of time to get through the intersection. Red means, OK, I’ll stop, I guess. Sometimes.
When I moved here I sold my $40K Saab convertible for a $10K used, beater commuter car. Because this is Vegas — bumper car and car theft capital of the West — my insurance on this car is nearly double what my Saab was in a more sedate town.
Unfortunately, in Amerika the ability to drive is not a right, not a privilege but a necessity approaching that of oxygen, water and food. I’m quite sure that after major illness and corporate downsizing, the 3rd major cause of homelessness in the USA is being without an automobile. Maybe I feel that way because outside Fulton County here in the Metro Atlanta area, it takes two to three hours on a bus to get to somewhere 10 miles away.
So I don’t want to hear any pure silliness about public transportation being an alternative, because most places in the country, it isn’t. And the LAST time I rode the bus here, it cost me over $500 in lost work and doctor bills, because four days later I came down with the worst case of flu I’ve had in years. I’ve moved close enough to my current job to walk if necessary. And that’s not an option for most folks either.
My driver’s test was almost as tough. Got docked points for not checking my mirror, had to parallel park, 3pt turn in a driveway, treating it as a two lane road, drive in reverse, etc. We should make our tests more rigorous. Since everyone pays for auto insurance, having better drivers would lower our rates.
Let me mention again! The law is designed to keep black people off the road.BTW it works!
Holy Shit!!!!
Damn Uncle Dave! You could sell that skit to SNL! That’s hilarious! Too bad you don’t have a video of it.