Shafaat Ahmed

3 May 2010, 11:31 PM - Khaleej Times

Night training, highway lessons and Novice Driving Programme are some of the proposed features of a new driving curriculum that RTA is planning to introduce soon.

Khaleej Times has learnt that the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) is proposing some of the Novice Driving Programme to be implemented at the federal level, while also working with the five driving institutes in Dubai to iron out a new unified syllabus for all the institutes.

Speaking to Khaleej Times in an exclusive interview, Ahmed Hashem Bahrozyan, CEO of Licensing Agency at RTA said: “We are trying to come up with a standard curriculum for driving institutes in Dubai, to ensure that certain standards in drivers’ training are met, improving road safety in the emirate.”

The RTA is in the process of finalising the curriculum and is currently discussing its finer points with the institutes.

The syllabus will mainly focus on the skills required by drivers when they get the licence and to make sure that the institutes are imparting those skills to the students. The idea is to teach the students simpler skills first and then move on to complex modules in a gradual way.

“The curriculum that we are trying to put in place will ensure that the trainee is exposed to different and actual driving conditions that a person is likely to experience after getting a driving licence,” elaborated Bahrozyan.

Among the highlights of the proposed syllabus are the training of drivers at night and on highways, which the trainees currently don’t experience during their training.

“Night training and to a certain extent highway training will be part of the curriculum, these are things that do not exist in the current system. People obtaining licences now are allowed to drive on highways although they are never trained to drive on highway and for a novice driver it sometimes creates problems leading to fatal accidents sometimes,” Bahrozyan added.

Bahrozyan said that the new curriculum would also focus on reducing the gap between training and tests.

As part of the syllabus the trainers will be made aware of RTA’s testing procedures and what RTA is looking to see in potential drivers. The RTA is also planning to announce the test routes to the trainers so that the students are trained on the same routes.

However, the new course would not be official implemented until next year. But some or all of its features will soon be put on trial on new students to see the extent of its effectiveness. “We will put the curriculum on trail to see to what extent it is effective and to make necessary changes if required before finally implementing it,” informed Bahrozyan.

Separately, as part of the same initiative the RTA has proposed Novice Driving Programme at the federal level.

“Most of the advanced countries have a novice drivers’ programme, where they monitor a new driver’s behaviour for the first three years. During the first three years of obtaining the driving licence they have ceetain restrictions and those restrictions are gradually eased as the driver’s experience increases and behaviour improves.”

“We have proposed a similar programme to the Ministry of Interior. As UAE is a small country and people travel between emirates daily, we believe implementing such a programme at Dubai alone will not have the desired result.”

The Ministry of Interior is currently studying the proposal and RTA is hoping to get the programme approved soon to be implemented at the federal level.