KEY POINTS:
For more than 50 years Amelia Kahira Morrison has been driving without a licence.
The Ohinemutu 79-year-old reckoned she wasn't good enough to pass her test, so she never sat it.
She got away with it for more than 50 years until police caught her last month.
They took her car away for 28 days, and told Mrs Morrison she had to sit her licence if she wanted to keep driving.
This week she got her car back after getting her learner's licence through a free course at Rotorua's Taharangi Marae.
The marae has dealt with about 480 people every year for the past three years - most of them people aged over 30 who have been driving unlicensed for years.
Police and course operators suspect there are many more unlicenced drivers out there on Rotorua roads.
Driver trainer Lillian Emery said many clients were older people who had never had a licence or were sick of getting fines for driving illegally.
Some had learning difficulties which had stopped them from sitting their licence.
"It's a hard road to hoe for many of them because they may be dyslexic or have literacy problems so they don't know what they are reading in the Road Code," she said.
Many had been fined thousands of dollars for driving without a licence.
"They get their cars impounded and have to pay $400 to get them back and then they have to pay a fine as well.
"That can have an effect on parents and the rest of the family.
"The stress can lead to medical and financial problems for families," she said.
Those stresses could be avoided by getting a licence.
"We all have to share the road with one another and we want Rotorua to be a safe place to live and drive. Far too many people are being killed on our roads," she said.
Mrs Morrison cannot drive alone until she gets her full licence. Taught how to drive by her husband Peter in a truck more than five decades ago, Mrs Morrison said she had previously never felt ready enough to sit her licence.
"I was really nervous and I was scared I'd fail. I was only driving to tangi, church and giving people a lift to doctors or the supermarket. I've never had an accident," she said.
Inspector Greg Sparrow said innocent road users were being killed by unlicensed, inexperienced drivers.
"They may know how to stop but they may not know who to give way to at an uncontrolled intersection.
"I get that happening to me all the time because people don't know the road rules. That's why we have a Road Code - so people can drive safely on our roads. You just have to look at the waste of life of our young people driving on our roads with only a learner's licence or none at all ... you don't have to have a brain to work out one death is a waste of a life," he said.
- DAILY POST
