Planitia's Vent

Our Computers aren’t working? October 10, 2011

Well That’s just your bad luck.

That’s what I was told after paying $80 to sit a test that went for a grand total of 18 minutes and featured a lovely array of the finest quality videos that youtube has seen. Yeah It was an 18 minutes slideshow of the worst quality videos that have ever been witnessed. RTA Driver testing has hit an all time low, you are required to watch clips taken from within a car which goes through a series of hazards, you respond to these hazards by tapping the screen when you believe you should slow down, However, in the video you are unable to see the hazard until it is too late, and no matter how early you respond you still fail. (Yes I actually tapped the screen BEFORE the video had even advanced one second).

The RTA’s new standards of testing feature a person driving a car through hazards, recording these experiences on a camera phone and if you are smarter than a dog you also realise that in the videos THE PERSON DRIVING BREAKS THE LAW on several occasions. If I had done my practical test to the same standard of that of the driver in the video I would have failed with flying colours.

On top of that their computers were constantly crashing that day, their website was down and the ‘Detailed’ sheet I received at the end of the test listed hazards that I failed to identify ignoring the fact that I wasn’t even tested on most of them. I would gladly resit a Practical driving test than sit though a 5 minute clip show of blurry camera phone videos and a system which strives on the $40 per attempt. I would rather take my chances with the pokies, apparently the odds are much higher. Pokies in Australia have 1- 1,000,000 odds, I might recommend to all the gambling addicts that the RTA testing computers can suck more money faster.

On top of that they believe that I have no basis to request a refund, Lets see what the Dept. of Fair Trading has to say about that. They also lack in customer service because well, the RTA has NO competition because they have exclusive rights to licencing in NSW and as a government department don’t have to follow the same laws as other businesses.

It’s depressing when you see people parked like this who have somehow successfully passed the driving test.