GIMLI, Man. – Manitoba’s driver training programs are not protecting farm kids’ lives and should be fixed, says the Manitoba Women’s Institute.
All new drivers should be trained on gravel roads before they receive their licence, the organization said in a resolution at its annual meeting.
“They just don’t prepare them,” said Dianne Kowalchuk of Rivers.
She said one of her daughters lost control while driving on a gravel road, overturning the car and destroying it. Kowalchuk said her daughter could have been killed.
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The girl had received no formal gravel road training in school-sponsored driver training lessons.
Another woman told a similar story, except in this case the young man who crashed his car was charged and convicted of unsafe driving.
“The judge said he should have known,” she said.
“It was not his fault he did not learn.”
Though the resolution was passed by a large majority of MWI members, one woman said if the government did make gravel road training a mandatory part of driver training, it would only make the situation worse.
She said auto dealerships that provide cars for driver training do not want them driven on gravel roads. If gravel road training was required, many auto dealers would pull their cars from the program.
That would be disastrous, she said, because there are already far too few cars available.
Virden, which used to have three cars for driver training, now only has one, said the woman, who is a retired driver training instructor.
She said gravel road training can be done at home.
“Parents are better teachers.”
The Manitoba government has just implemented a graduated drivers licence program. It claims breaking new drivers into categories of learner, intermediate and full licence will greatly reduce accidents and keep roads safer.
Under the new system, the youngest fully licensed driver will be 17 and a half years old. A learner’s licence can be obtained at 15 and a half years old. New drivers cannot move into the intermediate stage until they are at least 16 years and three months old.
A new driver can drive a farm truck during the intermediate stage and drive without a supervisor during the day and up until midnight.
Keystone Agricultural Producers praised the bill for being sensitive to farmers’ needs.
KAP president Don Dewar said the government’s original proposal would not have given new drivers an intermediate licence until they were 17. That would be a problem for farm families because farming parents need their children to be able to take care of themselves after school.
The original proposal also didn’t allow learners to get a commercial trucking licence until they were 19, another rule that would have caused problems in rural Manitoba. But Dewar agreed there isn’t enough driver instruction in rural Manitoba.
