Starting today, the Land Transportation Office will roll-out its program of issuing driver’s licenses renewals with 10-year validity in all LTO branches in the National Capital Region. But only drivers who have no record of driving violations in the LTO are qualified for this new privilege.
In addition to this, drivers who will renew their licenses, whether for the new standard of 5 years, or for the longer 10 year validity, will now have to undergo the LTO’s Comprehensive Driver’s Education lecture and pass a new 25-item examination about its contents.
The reason the LTO is implementing these new measures is because of Republic Act No. 10930 which was signed into law by President Duterte in 2017. The law amends Section 23 of the much outdated RA 4136 or the Land Transportation and Traffic Code which took effect in 1964.
Under RA 10930, Section 23-A of the amended Land Transportation and Traffic Code compels the LTO to implement stricter rules before the issuance of Driver’s Licenses. “The LTO shall promulgate prerequisites and guidelines before the grant of drivers’ licenses to ensure that these are issued only to deserving applicants with sufficient driving skills and knowledge on road safety and proper road courtesy,” states the new law.
RA 10930 also establishes a demerit system for drivers caught violating road rules. A progression of demerits may require a driver to undergo a seminar, take the seminar and pass an exam or, at 40 demerits earned, have one’s license suspended for 2 years.
The revised rules and requirements, one would assume, are interventions intended to make our roads safer by educating drivers and ensuring only drivers qualified with the right knowledge and skills to be behind the wheel are allowed to do so. And this is where it gets sketchy.
The new Comprehensive Driver’s Education modules are designed to include topics that, as a driver, you ought to know by now. Accessible via the agency’s portal.lto.gov.ph website, these presentations contain information on proper driver disposition and responsibilities, road safety, road and traffic laws, even defensive driving. The CDE modules also go through the various penalties and demerits involved in specific violations. So it really is comprehensive. But they are also boring to watch.
Going through the free to watch and download CDE videos on the LTO portal will consume up to 5 hours of your time. They are soliloquies that would make you want to stand up, grab a cup of coffee, and watch a music video on YouTube at the same time if only not to fall asleep. While the information in them is gold, there is just no interactive element that ensures those viewing these CDE modules actually learn anything. Until, of course, you take the exam.
When we were in grade school, high school and even in college, examinations were the school’s way to gauge if we retained the information they were teaching. But in the LTO’s case, the examination seems like it is just another prerequisite to have your license renewed. There’s no time limit in answering the online exam in the LTO portal. One metric to see if one actually knows something is when asked, an answer can immediately be given. The element of time is part of what an exam is all about. But if you have all the time and opportunity to look up an answer to an exam, like going back to the CDE materials or even Googling the answer, then it defeats the purpose of the whole exercise.
The CDE validation exam has 25 questions. And the passing rate is 50% in order for one to get a certification. According to LTO Chief, Assistant Secretary Edgar Galvante, there is a pool of 150 questions in the system. Anyone who wishes to take the exam will be presented with 25 questions randomly picked from this pool. So you can expect some of the questions asked again over various attempts.
But if these same questions are asked, you only need to memorize the online reviewer answers and not bother to go through all the materials. YouTube is already full of videos even showing the questions to be asked on the examination itself. There is even an online reviewer from the LTO that shows 60 possible questions already. You might be able to skip the 5-hour torture of the CDE videos and still answer 13 questions right to get your certificate of passing.
The online CDE modules on the LTO portal should have interactivity and clickability where a series of short questions after each section are asked to see if the attendee actually understood the section. Miss the time you are supposed to type an answer, and the whole program starts again. Moreover, the CDE module won’t move on to the succeeding topics if the quick questions aren’t answered correctly. That pretty much is how online learning is done.
The way it is currently set-up now, the modules are mere PowerPoint presentations with a voiceover on them. And the examination itself defeats the purpose of the modules being “comprehensive.” We have decent materials and detailed information in the CDE, but when it comes to testing if people actually absorbed and understood them, then we just fail.
According to zuto.com, the Philippines is one of the countries with the easiest driving tests to pass. Why are we still making it easy for just about anyone to get a Driver’s License, and even give a ten-year license at that?
In China for example, the theory test contains 100 questions and requires one to memorize 1,000 in total. Vietnam has 450 questions in its theory test. Singapore has two difficult theory tests with 50 questions each before a driver can even apply for a practical exam. I say, put in 100 questions, and not the same questions every time with a pool of 500 questions the system can randomly present to the examinee. And remove the reviewers from the LTO’s portal too. The passing rate should be at least 85% and maybe even 95% for professional drivers. In Russia, the passing rate is 95%. Japan, Georgia, Portugal, Moldova, Qatar and Bulgaria are at 90%.
According to Assec Galvante, a driver can even try the exam as many times until he passes. I say, there should be a limit to how many times one can take the exam over a given time period.
If an examinee fails to pass, there should be at least 30 days before he can access the online exam again. This will give him time to reeducate him or herself and learn the contents of all the materials.
In short, by making it difficult to pass the exam, and providing real world penalties such as an actual delay in retaking the exam and therefore a delay in renewing the license, there will be a deterrent to not taking the CDE modules and the exam seriously. But, in exchange, we can at least have drivers on the road who are more learned and more qualified to be there. Otherwise, as it is now, this is just the same old corrupt system that has produced incompetent, undisciplined, and undesirable drivers in the past. We’ve only just changed the medium of incompetency really, from pen and paper to our mobile phones.
And while we are improving the system, perhaps it is also time for the license card itself to be snail-mailed or couriered to the driver using the address listed on the card. That way, there is a higher probability that the address provided by the driver is actually his own. Law enforcers would just love that, wouldn’t they?
And as social media netizens have brought forward, if drivers will be required to undergo this CDE, then enforcers should also be mandated to undergo regular refresher courses about the rules they are tasked to implement.
We all know by now that people will not learn to follow without strict, consistent and equal enforcement of the law. We are supposed to be trying to solve problems here. The problem of too many undeserving drivers on the road. The problem of lack of discipline on the road. The problem of drivers causing accidents against property and people because they do not follow rules. Rules that should have been ingrained at the very start of their driving experience.
The solution we have now is not solving any of these problems. It is only perpetuating them. And once again, we are wasting people’s time and money. Worse, we are continuously exposing ourselves and compromising our safety on the road to the lot of unqualified drivers who make a mockery of the system.
Driving is a privilege. And you have to earn that privilege with the right education and skills needed to behave safely and responsibly on the road. Elitist as it may sound, this is not about imposing an additional burden on the poor. It is about doing the right thing for the safety and well-being of road users. When it comes to driving, if you know, you know. And if you don’t, then you shouldn’t be behind the wheel in the first place.
