Driving instructors training GTA students on country roads
Posted April 9, 2010 8:24 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A number of Toronto based driving schools have decided to send their students to small towns across Ontario for their driving tests.
A Toronto Star investigation has revealed that some driving instructors coach their students on known examination routes out of the city (in Bancroft, for example) to guarantee them an easy test, for a fee of $200.
As a result, the students are passing the tests on simpler routes at more than twice the rate of their counterparts in the GTA.
Toronto Star reporter Brett Popplewell told 680News that the roads the students drive on for the test are nothing like what they face in Toronto.
“It’s not even the same geographic region as Toronto (…) they take their driving tests on roads in a town with three stoplights,” he said, “it’s whether you’re doing it in Toronto, merging onto the 401, and driving through some of the most congested streets in the country, versus driving on the rural back country roads around Bancroft”
The ministry encourages driving schools to speed along the licensing process in an effort to limit delays in cities like Toronto that have long wait times for a road test.
“The whole notion that some test centres might be giving easier tests, the ministry doesn’t really accept that”, Popplewell added, saying Ontario does not police what goes on in driving schools.
When it comes to preparing for a road test, a driving instructor caught coaching a student on an examination route in Toronto could be fined $130 due to a bylaw restricting the act. Taking a student up to a small town averts this danger.
According to data the Toronto Star obtained through a freedom of information request in December 2008, 77.1 percent of drivers pass their road test in Bancroft. In Scarborough, that rate is lowered to 52.7 percent.
