Your Car or Mine - DrivingCoach Instructor Stories

I came across this article from The Star, and thought it was quite interesting and worth spreading the word about…

More than 35 000 people were caught driving in Cape Town without valid driving licences in the first six months of 2008 – and more than 19 000 unlicensed cars were pulled over.

ANC councillor Werner Scwhella said he was “deeply concerned” about the number of people driving without licences.

“The question is whether people are merely ignoring the law or taking a chance driving without a licence due to the long waiting periods,” he added

Many jobs require a driving licence, which means frustrated motorists are choosing to drive illegally.

According to the Metro Police’s quarterly report, Cape Town’s traffic department dealt with 19 234 unlicensed drivers and just under 11 000 unlicensed vehicles in April, May and June, 2008

Cape Town is doing ‘relatively well’ in reducing the waiting time to six months

Traffic spokesperson Merle Lourens said the high number of unlicensed drivers could be because of the testing backlog. It could also be caused by motorists who did not want to get a valid driver’s licence.

Acting safety and security director Heathcliff Thomas said the waiting period for a new licence was nine months nationally but that Cape Town was doing “relatively well” in reducing the waiting time to an average of six months.

A pilot booking system had been introduced at the Lingelethu driving licence test centre in Khayelitsha, he said, and would be followed by others at Atlantis, Milnerton and Gallows Hill.

Even with the introduction of the new system, it takes at least six months to book for a licence test

The next available date for a licence test is in February 2009

By Anél Powell

Our driving lessons over the last 2 weeks went remarkably well and here’s a quick recap:

We finally got our 20km’s per hour girl up to 60km’s per hour, I know this is hard to believe but it’s true! You go girl! We managed to cover lots and lots of roadwork in all the busy cape town areas and parking is literally coming out of our ears. We did nearly lose some poles, but luckily no major damage was caused. As for our nerves I’d rather not say anything :P, but at least our NLP skills helped our clients…

That something magic I was hoping for the boys did finally happen and there was a massive improvement in both driving and parking skills of the guys. Ok, so boys and girls are even once more…

Lots of tension in the air with lots of tests coming up, but knowing my students, they’ll come out tops as always.

Keep those spirits up and see you all soon.

Browsing online the other day, we came across the strangest website. This website promises to get their clientele a booking for their drivers and or learners tests within three days of completing a contact form and making a rather ridiculous payment of R299.

Guys, please be very wary of this, as this is an absolute scam. There is no possible way that any company can provide this service. The only way to ensure your test booking is to literally go to a testing station yourself, get your eye test done,  verify your identity and make the payment necessary (either R60 for learners or R120 for drivers). This might mean that you have to stand in a queue for a couple of hours, but at least you know you’re doing things the right way. 

I would also really appreciate if you guys could report anything else of this nature you may come across; it is quite simply illegal.