I’ll confess to being among the many who watch CWD, wondering how it is that anybody can be so <snobbish-description-goes-here> as to make the mistakes that the drivers regularly make.

And make no bones about it – in most cases, the drivers on the show find themselves in the woeful real-world situations they confess to have been in solely as a result of their own outlook on the privilege of driving.  Whether through ignorance, or arrogance, or a laissez faire attitude, they simply don’t take the responsibility seriously.  And in so doing, they put themselves and others at risk every day they’re behind the wheel.

Admittedly, CWD is a show.  And like any show, it needs to offer entertainment value.  True to its name then, you’re seeing a microcosm of the worst driving offenders the country has to offer.  I’m sure – or at least, I hope – that the percentage of Canadian drivers who’d make for good CWD viewing is actually a statistically-irrelevant number.

What can’t be denied, however, is that the drivers who appear on CWD have been granted the same privilege that even the best Canadian driver has been granted – which is, obviously, the privilege to drive on public roads.  That’s right – provincial governments have determined that the drivers who make you face-palm week after week on CWD are as capable as you are to pilot a two-ton vehicle down a road covering 28 metres per second, and taking somewhere in the neighborhood of 2/3 of a football field to bring to a standstill from the fastest legal speed.

As far as I’m concerned, Canada’s Worst Driver says much more about the driver training and licensing system in this country – and even the enforcement and insurance systems – than it does about the drivers who appear on the show.

I was among the many who was particularly upset with the HTA 172 act which made it a criminal offense to (among other things) drive 50km/h over the posted speed limit.  Is that because I like to drive 50km/h over the limit?  No – if anything, the act made me raise the speed-limit warning in my car from 13x km/h to 140km/h.  While there are many things wrong with HTA 172, what was and still is upsetting to me is that it goes about solving the wrong problem with the wrong method.  Like, the completely-wrong method. And the completely-wrong problem.

CWD is a perfect example of how HTA 172 solves the wrong problem.  When somebody decides to stop on a 400-series highway because they’re afraid to merge, or gets flustered at a downtown intersection and ends up running a red light at a busy intersection, no application of HTA 172 is going to solve that particular problem.  I’d be willing to bet that the chances of somebody dying due to a distracted driver running a stop sign are significantly higher than the chances of somebody dying from a driver doing 151km/h on highway 407.  Yet a failure-to-stop conviction will run you $110, while a stunt-driving conviction (which can be as innocuous as doing donuts in a parking lot) can take $10,000 out of your wallet, plus a well-deserved six-month break in a detention facility.

If there’s anything that CWD makes perfectly clear, it’s that provinces need to implement regular re-testing, and the driver education system needs a total overhaul.  I find it strange to believe that the province of Ontario happily granted me a full G license without me ever showing them that I could safely drive faster than 50km/h.  Perhaps the parallel-parking test was enough to satisfy their fears.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again – I have no problem whatsoever with being re-tested every 5 years.  Even if it amounts to a doubling of my annual car registration expense.  Why?  Because at least then I’d feel safer in my car knowing that everybody else on the road has been regularly-tested as well.  And while I’d prefer that the re-test is a practical driving test, I can admit that I’m sensitive to the potential financial challenge that may pose to the province.  Fine, start off with written re-testing, and make it occur in a controlled environment so that the answer isn’t a Google search away.

Maybe after that we can talk about the lunacy of keeping Ontario limits at 100km/h on highways where people regularly cruise at 130km/h without issue.  Maybe then I’d welcome HTA 172 knowing that 1) drivers are tested regularly, and (2) the posted speed limits actually make sense.

For now though, I can only tune-in to shows like CWD and laugh – at a situation that isn’t really funny regardless of how you look at it.