I know somebody who works at a drive test centre in a small town in southern Ontario doing license testing. This small town is two hours away from Toronto. She says that she spends almost all day, every day in cars from Toronto, Peel and York. They come in cars packed full with people first thing in the morning and sit in front of the office all day long while they do their tests one by one. This office is in a plaza with multiple other stores, and the people from the GTA stand in front of the doors of the other stores, clustered in big groups with no masks on, not even getting out of the way when people are trying to get into or out of those stores. She says some days the entire parking lot looks like a concert with the number of people just hanging around all day long.
She's worried about her safety being forced to be in cars all day long with people from a covid hot spot, but she's also worried about the safety of everybody else she's in cars with. Because if she gets exposed to the virus then anybody else that comes in for a test is going to be exposed too. She's really worried about her small community because there are currently zero cases in the area and only small hospitals that cover a large geographical area that would be very easily overwhelmed if there was an out break.
Right now they're forcing people to do their tests with the windows partially opened, but they're already getting complaints about that and she's not sure they'll be allowed to continue requiring the windows down when the weather gets colder. They might be forced into the confined space with people from the GTA for a half hour at a time per person or risk losing their jobs.
It shocked me that they were ever allowed to travel so far for tests, especially given everything going on right now. She says it's been going on forever all over the place, the people that come to the small towns can't pass the test if they take it in the city so they go to small towns trying to get their license where there's no traffic. They barely pass there, then they go back to the big cities and are not safe to be driving there at all. It's no wonder the car insurance rates in the GTA are so high.
Apparently the Doug Ford government isn't even considering restricting how far people can travel to do license testing. Based on what she told me it's only a matter of time until small towns across southern Ontario end up with out breaks of the virus due to this.
