Good and Bad Licenses: Commercial Driving License

When you seek to enter a new field of employment you sometimes have to face a barrier to entry. Some barriers of entry are fair and serve a public good, some are unfair and corrupt. In a city with as long a history of political issues and corruption as Chicago, IL it’s easy for people to assume that any barrier to entry is unjust. However a great many serve very valuable roles. A commercial driving license for example makes a great amount of sense because it serves a very real purpose, one that would not be handled by simple market skepticism.

One of the common criticisms of licenses is that they do nothing that wary consumers can’t take care of themselves. If people are careful they can avoid hiring unskilled people for a lot of tasks, and on the flip side, a lot of people can get licenses that aren’t great at their job. On the other hand certain things carry licensing requirements because doing them poorly imparts a risk on too many people. Doctors need medical licenses and truck drivers need commercial driving licenses in Chicago, IL.

They may seem like an unnatural pair, but when talking about the risks posed it makes a great deal of sense. A bad truck driver is a danger on the highway to all others. A bad doctor can give faulty medical advice or make dangerous prescriptions, or perform their job in a manner which is dangerous. It’s actually worse with a truck driver, at least a bad doctor has to have people come to him or her for business, a bad truck driver can drive poorly and cause a highway disaster with a flip or jack knife. When a commercial driver doesn’t know what he or she is doing they can hurt a lot of innocent people who had no means to defend themselves against the irresponsibility.

A healthy skepticism towards anything that serves as a barrier to entry into a marketplace is a good thing. Well intentioned laws can eventually serve to do nothing other than protect companies from competition; however, sometimes it is entirely justified. Anyone who’s ever driven through rush hour traffic in or around Chicago, IL can tell you just how awful the traffic is. The constant tolls, the choke points, and heavy traffic, make the drive unpleasant enough, if one were to add in truck drivers without knowledge of what they were doing it would become truly nightmarish. There is a strong and clear need for commercial driving licenses in Chicago, IL, and that these licenses should require real education and testing to get because of the danger posed by irresponsible drivers.