You don't pay - you don't drive
EYEWITNESS
|
|
|
By Kaja Kunnas in Tallinn
The Estonian body that administers the driving test is called ARK (for Auto Registri Keskus). From the beginning of this year, ARK has promised to install videocameras in the cars used for the test.
As a consequence, I have decided that this year I will take the test. I no longer fear that I will get hoodwinked on the test just as I have been by the driving schools.
I can boast of more than three hundred lessons in the car in the Tallinn traffic, and I have had three different driving instructors.
The only thing I am missing is taking the test itself.
My first instructor enthused that I was a quick learner behind the wheel.
It was a sunny late summer in 2002. The lessons were fun. In the dual-control car, the instructor had a gas pedal as well as a brake pedal, and he would stomp on the former whenever I was dawdling or overly hesitant in traffic.
The fun stopped pretty soon, when he changed jobs and I got a new face beside me in the passenger seat.
The new instructor started my lessons again from scratch.
It was a grey winter in early 2003. On my first time out I was allowed only to drive slowly in a circle around an empty square.
After some dozens of lessons, he commented that I would never learn to drive. In that respect, he said, I was like his wife.
However, by the spring of 2003 I had my first opportunity to get a driving licence.
My instructor was of the opinion that whilst there was no way I would ever be able to satisfy the examiner on the test, I could manage alright in traffic.
The lesson ended on a more cordial note than usual.
The instructor leant across and said that really he ought not to be saying this to me, as I was a journalist and all, but he wanted to help me out, you know.
He told me he had had a contact among the examiners. Since I was heavily pregnant, and presumably therefore would soon be in need of a car, he could try to see if his old contact still worked.
I was left speechless. My head whirled. For the first time in my life I had been offered the opportunity to slip someone a bribe.
After I gave birth, I returned to the driving school and took up my lessons as before.
From time to time the instructor would hint at the possibility of securing a driving licence by other means than this.
I got a third driving instructor. The new man pointed out to me the sorts of places where one generally failed the driving test.
At one junction, for instance, it was necessary to know that the branch of a tree had grown so that it obscured a traffic sign.
It was interesting.
In the winter of 2004 my third teacher promised me that if I paid 200 euros, I would get through the driving test first time.
There was a specific test inspector who could oblige. If I was making a mistake or about to make one, the inspector would warn me in advance.
I carried on with the lessons for a good while. Others, apparently, would ask instead whether they could take the test in money.
Many Estonians of my acquaintance were astonished about my experiences, but others were not. They just shrugged. One friend told me not long ago that her 18-year-old son had paid up immediately after completing the compulsory minimum forty lessons.
According to the independent think-tank and research centre Praxis, in 2003 one in ten people in Estonia had used bribery in order to facilitate getting some document or other. Bribery is declining.
Estonia's Institute of Economic Research, which monitors corruption in the country, has stated that three years ago 12 per cent of the population reported being asked to pay a bribe, while the figure had dropped to eight per cent by 2005. In 2005, some three per cent of people had actually paid, and the average sum was EUR 300.
My third driving instructor often appealed to these other people by asking me: "You don't honestly imagine you are the only one, do you?"
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 4.1.2007
"Eyewitness" is a series in which Helsingin Sanomat correspondents abroad write about their experiences in the country where they are stationed.
KAJA KUNNAS / Helsingin Sanomat
kajakunnas@hotmail.com
