Ile-de-France: it is the traffic jam to pass your driving license this summer

At 63, Michèle's ambition was to have her driver's license in the spring. It was finally this Tuesday morning that this mother received (finally) her little pink paper, after two failures in January and February last. Since she left downtown Beauvais (Oise) to settle in the golf course of Saint-Nom-la-Bretèche (Yvelines), the permit had "become a necessity for a question of autonomy. "

Like 350,000 other candidates in France (nearly 40,000 in Ile-de-France and Oise), Michèle had seen her exam postponed since March 16 and the Covid-19 crisis. And now it's the big traffic jam in front of the examination centers that have been empty for three long months.

Two weeks after the motorcycles and the heavyweights, the tests of the B license (car) certainly resumed on June 8 at a frantic pace. But industry professionals are already planning a monster cap for the weeks - and probably months - to come. With this logic of following the directives of the delegation to road safety (DSR) which encourages "driving schools to respect the initial order of presentation of candidates. "

"For them, one or two hours of driving and they are ready again", specifies Philippe Colombani, president of the National Union of Independent Driving (Unic) and instructor in the Yvelines.

"It's DIY"

"Stressed after her two failures for refusal of priority", her pupil Michèle had needed eight hours of refresher. Today, she is "the pride" of her two children and her husband. But she had to take her trouble patiently.

Michèle (63) got her driver's license on the third attempt./LP  

Especially since beyond the waiting candidates, requests continue to flow, and traditionally, the month of June and the first two weeks of July are very busy periods for examination centers. According to the president of Unic, the queue should even increase due to the sanitary measures linked to Covid-19. Today, an inspector tests 11 candidates a day, against 13 before, to allow vehicles to be disinfected between each exam. The addition of “rejected” candidates and new registrants therefore creates a bottleneck that the DSR has tried to streamline by proposing three solutions: open 90,000 additional exam seats distributed between Saturday and evening, reduce the exam by 10 minutes zapping theoretical questions and recalling retired inspectors.

"It's DIY, annoys Philippe Colombani. 90,000 volunteer places compared to the 350,000 candidates waiting, it is a misery. Concerning the retired inspectors, only 13 responded that they were present! We do not ask for alms but we must remain serious. "

The disorganization of the administration pointed out

The president of Unic also points to the disorganization of the administration to explain these delays. The Delegation of road safety, which has not responded to our requests, provides slots which driving schools must apply to obtain places. But the proposals and the responses would be too late: “We can receive the proposals on Friday evening for Tuesday or Wednesday morning. We make our request but sometimes, the response does not arrive until Monday. It is then necessary to warn the candidate who will want to take the wheel an hour or two to prepare. You have to organize to take it away ... So sometimes, you can't take the place. "

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To illustrate this situation, Philippe Colombani gives the example of a departmental delegate for road safety who, failing to be able to provide the compulsory seat protections, had to "go with a colleague to buy bath sheets at Decathlon and sew them itself so that the exams can take place ... "

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