Sham exam

It used to be that to legally operate a motor vehicle in the country, you need to go to the Land Transportation Office to secure a student driver's permit. Then off to driving sessions with your uncles you go because they're less likely to give you tongue-lashings if you cut a corner turning or you had the engine sputtering dead because you stepped on the clutch a second too late.

Nervous fathers sitting next to student drivers have almost always been a less than ideal learning route because they can come off more as tormentors than mentors. The dynamics are just different when dads try to teach their kids how to drive, maybe knowing they'll soon enough hog use of the family car.

Six months later, the student driver then goes back to the LTO to take a written examination and passing that gets ushered to the parking lot to show an LTO inspector that he or she can move a car from point A to B. Passing both, the non-professional driver's license card is then issued.

Not much has changed in the process of securing a driver's license except maybe insofar as the student driver of today is more likely to be enrolled in one of those driving schools, many of whose graduates somehow develop weird, unusual driving habits.

What has drastically changed is getting that original license renewed as all drivers are now mandated to register in the Land Transportation Management System being used by LTO to give online examinations. So while no exams were required under the old system, even seasoned drivers seeking to renew their licenses need to take the examination online.

Nothing wrong with refresher exams but they somehow penalize even those drivers who have not committed traffic violations or infractions during the validity of the licenses being renewed. Getting errant drivers to undertake seminars and then to take examinations to qualify anew to drive vehicles is not just acceptable; it's a must to weed out those drivers who endanger not only themselves but also pedestrians and their fellow motorists.

The odd thing is that the LTO itself is moving for the abolition of the LTMS allegedly because it is being used by fixers to renew the driving licenses of people who avail of their dubious service. In a recent hearing of the Senate Committee on Finance regarding the P167.12-billion proposed budget of the Department of Transportation, LTO chief Teofilo Guadiz III rattled off a litany of complaints against the LTMS.

Guadiz revealed that up to 80 percent of those taking online examinations under the LTMS could be persons other than those renewing their licenses.

"In most of these cases, I would say 75 to 80 percent, it is another person who is taking the seminar, it is another person who is taking the examination. We feel that this is reprehensible," Guadiz told senators. "So we are evaluating this and my inclination is just to totally abolish this portal."

Guadiz's main beef against the LTMS is that it does not have a facial recognition system that would allow the LTO to verify if the individual renewing the license is the same one taking the seminar and the examination. He maintained that if facial recognition is added to the system, then no one can cheat and the fixers would have little elbow room to make a quick buck.

"We're in that process now of developing this facial recognition not only in this portal in renewing drivers' licenses but our future plan is the driver license renewal will now be done online," Guadiz told the Senate panel.

The way Guadiz talked, we can assume that the present LTMS contract would not allow for the incorporation of facial recognition and so there's a need to overhaul the system. Are fresh bidding and new potential service providers being sought by the LTO? That looks like it.

There may be more than what meets the eyes in this particular issue, but the fact remains that the LTMS online examination system is fatally flawed. For one, what kind of an examination is that which allows you to take it as many times as you fail it until you have memorized all the correct answers to finally pass?

The LTMS online exam is a sham.