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Comment by mslate | Hacker News Reader

So the takeaway here is that some people should not be issued drivers licenses.

Well now we go down a rabbit hole of a complex social problem. People don't drive just to joyride. They so because many areas are zoned into car dependency. When faced with no legal way to drive:

(1) Keep driving anyway without a license or with a suspended license.

(2) Use public transit that takes two or three hours one way. When the bus is late again one day they get fired possibly setting off a downward spiral and that's another person on public assistance.

(3) Vote for politicians who allow ridiculous policies like Arizona's lifetime driver licenses.

(4) Zoning would change for less car dependency, and more demand would allow better transit (lines served more frequently and a wider selection of lines leading to less changes)

That's my wish too. People will not use low quality public transit. It will remain low quality as long as it's starved of funding relative to the free* roads, free* parking, and restrictive zoning iron triangle. Funding will remain a trickle until a critical mass of voters demand it. People think because it's low quality now it's not worth spending more taxes on.

*Free to motorists, not the taxpayers and real estate consumers.

Arizona stopped doing the lifetime thing. You have to renew your license in 10yrs now.

As far as I know, we do lifetime licenses in the UK, aside from photo licenses where the photo has to be renewed every 10 years (which can be done online). However, our driving tests are quite different from those in the US, in that they actually test your driving. (When my aunt and uncle moved from London to LA, they did their driving tests while severely jetlagged and still passed...)

That's certainly the case for people with eyesight problems and conditions such as epilepsy.

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