Governor Brian Kemp has certainly raised eyebrows since taking office as Georgia’s top elected official.
The courses he has chosen in handling the coronavirus situation have garnered him everything from the highest praise to the most condemning criticism.
But one of his latest orders certainly came out of nowhere, which is exactly where it should have stayed. That was his decision to grant drivers licenses to 16-year-olds without requiring a road test.
There is no justification anywhere for such a move. Let the youngsters wait a few weeks. And you have to wonder what insurance companies think about this.
The road test IS the determining factor as to whether or not a new driver deserves to be behind the wheel. It tests his or her skill.
I’ve figured out over the years it is also designed to test a new driver’s reaction under pressure, although that pressure is not as great as it was years ago. And it’s not the obvious pressure of negotiating traffic, but who is sitting next to you.
When Caleb, the youngest Harbison son, took his road test almost a decade ago, it was administered by a very nice lady who I felt went out of her way to make him comfortable. We had arrived early, without the required appointment, and she went ahead and gave the test with no fuss.
I had to wonder how much stress this actually created? After all, it was nothing like my experience a few decades earlier.
I took my test at the courthouse/jail in Ducktown. It was a place teenagers knew they did not want to be under any circumstances.
And the test wasn’t administered by a kind lady looking to make me comfortable.
I climbed behind the wheel of my 1966 Ford Fairlane and a Tennessee state trooper slid into the passenger seat beside me.
Here again, as teenagers, we knew the best way to stay in the good graces of our parents was to stay away from the reaches of those who could make our driving privileges vanish. We were taught a deep-rooted respect for the law.
The only thing I remember the trooper saying was, “Son, if you can drive in Ducktown, you can drive anywhere in the world.”
Those were the days Ducktown would make today’s downtown Blue Ridge on Saturday look like a ghost town. The copper company was thriving and so was town. It was always crowded with cars, trucks and people going in every direction.
I backed out of the courthouse parking lot, if you could call it a parking lot, and then the Ford wouldn’t go into drive. It had a habit of that trick occasionally and took a little tender loving care to encourage the linkage and gear to line up.
I think that’s when I really started to sweat, but strangely, the trooper didn’t seem surprised.
I think he must have recognized a teenager’s first car bought through the efforts of bagging groceries and cutting grass.
I made it down Main Street, turned around without any problems at Mine City Baptist Church, and navigated my way back to the courthouse without a hitch.
The driving part was really not that big a deal. Dad had put me behind the wheel of a car before my teenage years arrived. He made sure I knew how to drive before I owned the keys to my freedom.
I think the actual driving test was designed to intimidate, designed to make a teenager nervous.
But all went well. The trooper was professional and passed me with few words.
From those days of instilling fear, we’ve progressed to drivers license examiners who don’t carry guns and handcuffs, all the way to nice ladies, and now to no test at all.
As Dad always taught, some things just aren’t the smart thing to do, which is where Kemp’s decision to bypass driving tests lies.
I have to believe Kemp’s new drivers will have their own nerve-shattering first experience with a state trooper. I can only hope and pray their’s isn’t because their car is a crumpled heap of metal.
Glenn Harbison is publisher/editor of The News Observer. He can be reached at 706-632-2019 or by email at glenn@thenewsobserver.com.