A licence to drive – key

Would it surprise you to know that around 7,621 people take their driving test in Great Britain each working day? That totals around 1.8m / 1.8 million a year.

In 1893 France was the first country to introduce a driving test, but it was almost another 30 years before Britain introduced compulsory testing. In 1934 there were only 1.5m / 1.5 million cars on the road, yet despite this small number 7,343 people were killed on the road that year. Clearly drastic action was needed, and the following year, in 1935, the driving test was introduced. The results were positive and within a year the death toll had fallen by nearly 1,000 / a thousand.

Notes
Spellings: surprise – did you remember both ‘r‘s?; compulsory

Punctuation: Did you remember the question mark at the end of the first sentence? The question is delivered more as a statement than a question, but this does not allow you to forget the question mark!
Numbers – notice how we use commas when writing numbers – 7,621, 7,343 and 1,000. We say ‘point‘ when we are expressing a decimal point – 1.8m,1.8 million, 1.5m or 1.5 million.
Did you notice the speaker say ‘a thousand‘ and not ‘one thousand’? We do use ‘one‘ with a hundred or a thousand a) when we want to be or sound precise or b) just before another number 1,340 – one thousand three hundred and forty and c) inside a larger number – five thousand one hundred and six.

You probably put in commas 1) to end rather long clauses both in ‘In 1893 France was the first country to introduce a driving test, but….’ and ‘In 1934 there were only 1.5m cars on the road, yet….’ or 2) to separate off different points in ‘Clearly drastic action was needed, and the following year, in 1935, the ….’

Vocabulary: Had you realised total is a verb, as well as a noun?
on the road – 1) being driven 2) on all roads, on the whole road network
drastic – adj – extensive, extreme, severe; acting rapidly, suggesting ill-advisedly or violently (eg a drastic decision).
The phrase drastic action was needed is typical of the use of drastic – eg Drastic measures were taken to avoid more rioting. We’ll have to take drastic steps to ensure people get paid by next week. MPs warn that drastic cuts in public spending are called for.
within – preposition – occurring inside a particular period of time (within 10 days, within a year)
the toll – 1) a charge payable to use a bridge or road 2) the number of deaths or casualties arising from an accident, disaster, war etc

Structures: the first country to introduce …

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