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> it cost me something like 30 bucks and 30 minutes of my time

It cost you 30 bucks and 30 minutes of your time to pass the exam, not to learn how to drive. That’s what is costly in France, because it costs ~€50/hour to have someone teaching you how to drive. People usually take at least 20 hours to learn, which is 20x50 = €1000. If you already know how to drive you can bypass the whole process and pass the exam as a “candidat libre”, which is free [1] (but it’s hard to get a slot).

[1]: http://vosdroits.service-public.fr/particuliers/F2825.xhtml (in French)

As far I can tell, though it's not said explicitly in the linked article, you still have to justify that you have driven 20 hours in a car with dual-command (which will cost you 15-20€/hour to rent). That might be better than going through a driving school, but that's definitely not as cheap as the US.

I did pass my test 14 years ago with 20,00 hours of driving lessons and 2400F (a ridiculous 350€). In the recent years, I know no-one who passed the test with less than 28 hours, and that's an unilateral decision on the school side.

Where I learned in the US, we had a few weeks of driver's ed classes in HS, then practiced with an instructor for a bit. After that, getting a permit then a license was simple enough. At this point, I don't get anything more than vision tests and I don't actually have to renew my license until I'm 60 or something.

> People usually take at least 20 hours to learn

I've never heard of anyone taking less than 30 hours. And if you do 30 hours sharp you're one the lucky ones.

(another french here). I sadly agree on everything said here...

I would like to add that in my opinion, the main problem in France is that everything related to driving is now turned into a business.

Usually the driving test is less about driving and more about how long they can keep you in the DMV to charge you money. There is not a lot of preparation to the driving test itself in order to fail the test the first time (so they can charge you after that). I've also seen verbal agreements between driving inspectors and DMV's (I guess this is easier to do on the country side).

the driving test being just a drive around the block?

This varies. Driving is regulated at the state level, not the federal, and even then, it's pretty subjective.

I grew up poor, so didn't get my first license until I was 22. I was in a small town in Oklahoma, so there was one place to take it. First two times I failed; the officer grading the test was pretty much by the book. Third time, it was a laid back dude, and he didn't even have me parallel park. Gave me a 97 or something crazy like that.

I got my license at 16 without ever taking a driving test. To say it "varies" is a severe understatement.

>learner's permit at 14?

I'm pretty sure there are only 2 states where that's the case. It's definately not a normal thing for the vast majority of Americans. It's 15 in most states 16 in a few.

Edit: It's actually 5 states, plus 3 more that allow teenagers to get learners permits at between 14.5 and 15 with additional drivers education requirements.

Here's the numbers on just how many.

If you include Michigan with full permits at 14.75 at the asbolute earliest (though most teens wouldn't be able to complete a 40 hour drivers education course that fast so the average will be even closer to 15)--then around 7.3% of teenagers can get their learners permit sometime during their 14th year.

If you don't include Michigan only 4.1% can.

Definitely more than 2. http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/laws/graduatedlicenseintro

You're right. That list is a bit more complicated than it looks though. There are 5 states that allow a teenager to get a learners permit on their 14th birthday.

I was aware of Iowa and Sout Dakota, but I wasn't aware that North Dakota, Kansans, and Arkansas do this as well.

Michigan and Idaho issue learners permits at 14 years and 8 months, and 14 years and 6 months respectively. However they only allow driving during a drivers education class until that course is completed. Also Montanta issues permits at 14.5 if enrolled in a drivers ed class.

Most of these states are also very rural with very small populations, so the vast majority of American 14 year olds cannot get a learners permit.

> the driving test being just a drive around the block?

it varies quite a bit by DMV location. i've seen a weak correlation between local traffic levels and test duration/difficulty. which isn't the most unreasonable thing.

i'd like to see the folks who administer the test given some feedback about the number of licensees they tested who had an accident in their first year driving. and then provided the mean value for other testers in their zip code/state/etc.

>> "if you compare US driving fatalities to French ones, there's not much of a difference"

Source for this? There's someone a few comments down claiming that fatalities are much lower than the US.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-re...

7.6 per 1 billion km in US against 6.3 per 1 billion km in France. I would say very comparable especially if you consider that more older/younger people drive in US than in France.

regarding your second sentence... 11.6 (US) against 4.9 (France) per 100 000 inhabitants, from the same link.

Yes per 100,000 inhabitants, but to determine driver safety the correct metric is fatalities per x unit of distance driven, which is what the GP was using.

People in the US drive far more often than those in France, you'd expect for driving fatalities.

Meanwhile, 4.3 in the UK, a country demographically similar to France and where it's trivial to get a car and license. This makes me think the process of getting a license plays a big role in fatality rates, but more road quality, layout, better street furniture, signage, etc (which are all notably better in the UK than France).

Not really, The difficulty of getting a license is similar in France and the UK (source : I did both)

Since you've done both, are the parent article and other comments in this thread overemphasizing how difficult it is in France or did I just have a great experience here? I've done the test twice in the UK (auto + manual) - it wasn't arduous, nor did it take long to schedule (I think it was about 3 weeks out) and the computerised test was a case of picking the least stupid answer, unlike the riddles the parent article implies the French have to navigate.

The actual driving test is pretty much the same length and difficulty. (although I did the car test in France and the motorbike test in the UK) The French theory test needs a bit more preparation as more trick questions are asked. Also, the difference is perhaps, as far as I can remember, that French driving school offer more preparation to the theory test than is really required. In other words, they can keep you coming to the classroom until they are sure you will pass the theory...

According to Wikipedia[0] France has lower figures in every method of counting:

* 4.9/11.6 fatalities per 100k inhabitants per year

* 8.5/13.6 fatalities per 100k vehicles per year

* 6.3/7.6 fatalities per 1B vehicle-km

The two countries get closer for the last figure because the French usually drive shorter distances.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

The last figure is how safety comparisons are usually done. The first two don't really make any sense to compare for exactly the reason you cite: they spend less time in their cars, so they have less time for their driving skill to be reflected in the fatality rate.

Ideally you'd control for the length of the trip, types of roads they're traveling on, etc, but that data is nearly impossible to come by.

Well yes, but 17% less looks pretty significant to me.

That means about 6000 less dead Americans per year.

I think you'd really also need to normalize by age of the driver. I suspect that younger (under 21, say) drivers are more dangerous in both countries, but that in places where it's expensive and time consuming the licensed drivers will tend to be older.

I don't see why you'd normalize for that. I don't doubt that age is a factor, but surely the effect due to age should actually be counted. For example, different safety standards in cars will result in different fatality rates. That doesn't mean you try to eliminate that from the picture by normalizing for it, that means that the country with better safety standards is actually safer. If a country's roads are safer because they discourage or prevent younger drivers from driving, should not that additional safety count? Taken to an extreme: if a country allows 8-year-olds to drive cars and has a massive road fatality rate because of it, that shouldn't be normalized away when comparing with a country where you can't get a license until 18, right?

So my supposition is that although you're allowed to drive at 18 in France, the burden they place on licensing reduces the number of 18 year olds who actually do so, which has the effect of artificially aging their population of drivers. If you want to know how effective the training is, then you might need to normalize for age to eliminate that effect. If the discussion were about differences in how old you need to be to drive, then I'd agree with you, but the article is about the burdensome regulation around driver training.

If the regulations disproportionately discourage more dangerous demographics from driving, shouldn't that count as a safety improvement just as much as prohibiting them from driving altogether? Burdensome regulations are keeping a large number of dangerous drivers off the road. Shouldn't that be considered a win? (Not necessarily one that outweighs the costs, but in isolation that's a good thing, no?)

I'm not saying it isn't a win, necessarily. I'm saying we don't know if the training is what's causing the win, or if it's just the different demographic. Maybe you could get the exact same effect by either raising the driving age to 21, or keeping the driving age the same but otherwise (through fees and other burdens) discouraging people under 21 from driving. If that were the case (and I have no idea if it is or not), then you'd be unnecessarily costing people time and money, to no good effect.

Fair points, but on the other hand, part of the purpose of training can be to weed out people who are unsuitable for doing whatever you're training for. Maybe there are better ways to do it, but even if rigorous training just weeds out the reckless people and doesn't help the others, I'd still call that an advantage of rigorous training. Of course, it's reasonable to wonder if it helps the others too.

Yep, makes sense. Would be great to know if we could skip the test for people over age X, but maybe just making it expensive for people under that age is a good idea.

Number of vehicles on the road is not the same as miles/hours traveled.

America is much bigger country and people presumably drive much more than in Europe. So naturally vehicle deaths per 100K cars is higher in the US (because more time is spent at risk), irrespective of training/skill level.

US does better off of motorways.

4.0/5.2 fatalities per 1B vehicle-km on motoroways.

12.8/10.7 on non-motorways.

According to: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Road_traffic_safet...

Can't agree more. The system is retarded here. I didn't have the time to pass my license before leaving the country so I had to repay it when I came back from a year abroad. I failed the test then had to wait 6 months to retake it. I just gave up and I will wait to live in another country where it's cheaper and faster to get a license. I have many friends my age (mid 20s) who don't own a license either. If you live in a city you usually don't need one, if you want to travel you either take the train or use blablacar as parent said.

For San Francisco/Peninsula DMV locations, the drive test is reasonably challenging and involves signal use, merging, making unprotected turns, backing, and complex intersections. I failed it twice with my parent's car and resumed my attempt to pass a few years later, this time paying for lessons.

Like every other merit-oriented institution, there's an industry around gaming this system. Besides having valuable information about test details, the driving schools get to jump ahead of the line and get earlier test dates and plusher time slots, and take their lesson fee on top of the test fee. The message is pretty clear: Fork up the cash to go through a school if you want to get your license in a timely fashion.

The schools themselves vary from utter crap to the guy that I went with(Mr. Yu), who has done it part time for over 20 years and has perfect knowledge of all three of the designated routes the Daly City examiners use, tips for each intersection, tips for some specific examiners(!), and a pleasant and persistent attitude. Mr. Yu is popular enough to be booked solid for a month in advance, but apart from that there's hardly any wasted time - I am paying about $700 for three sessions of two hours(that time including pickup and dropoff, all of which I drove on my own) and the test itself, which I'm taking in September.

It's not a bad thing that people take trains rather than drive or that economic incentives favor living in cities.

Those are, in fact, things a country can want - for a multitude of reasons. Environmental impact, cultural centers, oil politics, etc. The fact that car-centric suburban culture is difficult to attain may be feature, not a bug.

This article does not describe a democratic process leading to a consensus that driving should be minimized. This article describes rent seekers abusing regulations at the expense of a populace that in fact needs to drive whtether it wants to or not.