Category - General

Mind you, following on from that last post, we’ve had about 4-6 inches of snow now. It seems to have stopped, but the forecast is for it to freeze (it was 0°C while it was coming down, anyway).

I have a new pupil booked tomorrow morning, and I was thinking towards the end of my last lesson tonight it wouldn’t be a good idea to go out once I realised how bad the snow fall was. She contacted me first, and we’ve postponed.

I’ve got another pupil tomorrow who has had quite a few lessons so far, but he is one of those people who is like a coiled snake on lessons – ready to strike out in any direction at any time at the slightest thing. I’ll see how it goes, but I can see that one having to be shelved. Too risky.

Then on Monday, another pupil has a test scheduled. Unless we have the Mother Of All Thaws tomorrow, the chances of that going ahead are very slim. My HTC phone weather app reckons it will be around freezing (or miles below) overnight all week, and although past experience of that means it could be as high as 20°C, I think it might be quite close this time.

As I’ve said before, I used to love the snow (I still do in some respects). But it’s already costing me. I do lessons when it’s safe to do so – but sometimes it just isn’t.

Will my driving lessons be cancelled due to snow?

It depends on how much snow there is, how far advanced you are with your training, and your instructor’s attitude to teaching in snow. There is no rule that says you mustn’t have lessons in snow. In fact, it makes sense to do them so you can get valuable experience. But beginners shouldn’t do it, because it’s just too dangerous.

Also remember that what YOU see as being “advanced” in your training, your instructor might not agree with. It’s his or her decision.

Will my driving test be cancelled due to snow?

Quite possibly. And with the amount we’ve had, almost certainly until some of it thaws. You need to phone up the test centre on the day using the number on your appointment email confirmation and check. Otherwise, you MUST turn up – even if they cancel it at the last minute. If you don’t, you’ll lose your test fee.

I noticed on a forum someone was asking about what would likely happen to a test if the examiner spotted damage to the sidewall of a tyre before setting out.

On the UK mainland, quite simply, a tyre:

…should have no less than 1.6mm of tread across the central ¾ breadth all the way around, and it should not have any cuts or bulges in the sidewalls.

That’s the official specification. It stops short of advising you what to do when you have an iron spike or ice pick sticking in your tyre. I guess they assume that common sense dictates you get the problem sorted.

If your tyres don’t meet this specification then the examiner is quite within his rights to cancel the test. The car is simply not safe.

And if he spots the fault, he WILL cancel it.

So it is absolutely unbelievable to read someone state that it is safe to drive on a tyre with a nail in it for 50 minutes – even “at speed” – because it won’t lose air, and a test shouldn’t be “lost” because of it.

Almost as unbelievable is the statement from the same person that Kwik Fit will always tell you you need a new tyre and won’t fix punctures.

That is more complete rubbish. Some branches might do that – which is a risk at ANY tyre shop – but Kwik Fit around my way are happy to fix punctures, and at least one other person on that same forum has said the same. My tyres are covered as part of my lease arrangement, and so I’d prefer a new tyre if I get a flat – but Kwik Fit have more than once opted to repair it.

It’s hard to believe sometimes that such dangerously misguided or even libellous advice can come from driving instructors.

If you have a nail in your tyre then you must get it fixed. Driving at full speed knowing you have one in there is insane, and it’s arguable whether you should be let out alone – never mind be allowed to teach people to drive – if you choose to do so.

For the record, a nail (or any other foreign object) stuck in your tyre is non-standard. It could move and cause the tyre to deflate at any time, and you have no control over whether or when that will happen. At speed, the damage it might have already done to the tyre’s structure – and about which you can only guess – could result in a catastrophic blow-out.

To suggest that it is safe to drive for ANY distance, let alone “at speed”, with such a tyre is too stupid for words.

I’ve mentioned a few times recently that I am expecting a rush of people trying to become ADIs this year. The recession is showing no signs of letting up, and many people are losing their jobs as their employers go to the wall. For many, self-employment is the only chance they have of working. I’m already seeing a few signs of increased interest in the job.

I’ve also said that – in my opinion – people becoming instructors doesn’t significantly affect the amount of work available. I mean, it’s obvious that at some point there could be too many instructors, but I don’t think we’ve ever hit that point (except possibly in a few depressed areas of the country).

So why are so many existing ADIs suffering or even giving up the job? In my opinion, it’s down to a complex mixture of poor marketing, bad advice, and greed.

I saw a magnetic sign on the side of a Hackney Cab today. It was advertising a local driving school – probably a one-man band, like most of us are – and it said:

5 lessons for £50

Lessons £16 an hour

I’ve seen the school car a few times and thought nothing of it. It’s not a banger or anything, and looks like it’s leased or owned. And I saw another ad in a takeaway a couple of days ago that said:

4 lessons £40.01

Yes, it did have the 0.01! I didn’t see what the normal hourly rate was, but you can be reasonably sure it wasn’t more than £20.

When someone becomes an ADI they have a choice of joining a franchise or going solo. Those who are genuinely not clear about which path to take are often given very bad advice by established ADIs who have issues with franchises. Many of these will have started out on a franchise of some sort, but once they were established they went solo. However, for some inexplicable reason, they try to persuade new ADIs to go solo right at the start!

Other newly-qualified instructors are just greedy, and reason that if they are doing 40 hours of lessons a week then paying a franchiser a fee of between £100-£200 is money they could have in their pockets. The difficult part, though, is getting those 40 hours. As a new ADI, it’s like taking up football for the first time and then expecting to get picked for England against Holland next month. It doesn’t happen.

This is where the bad marketing kicks in. In order to try and get the 40 hours they have to advertise, and since they’re not the only ones in the market for pupils, they need a hook. The hook is lower prices. But then, the problem is simply that even if they could get anywhere near 40 hours, every £1 they knock off their lesson rates is another 2 hours of lessons they need to do just to remain where they are. The fact that they don’t get 40 hours – many are lucky to be doing half that, and yet their original business plan demanded that they get around 40 hours at a full hourly rate – just compounds the issue.

Now, I charge £23 an hour for learner lessons, and I calculate that my pre-tax profit from that must work out to somewhere between £12-£15 an hour (very approximately). Someone charging £16 an hour, with similar overheads, would be making between £5-£8 an hour pre-tax, which would fall still further when the “5 for £50” lessons are factored in. Then there’s the advertising outlay (Lord knows how much it costs to have an advert stuck on a taxi), and the likelihood that it will be ineffective.

Slapping an A5 flyer in the local Chinese or Indian takeaway doesn’t fill diaries. Nor does sticking the equivalent on the side of a taxi. Neither can keep diaries full. At best, it gets a couple of pupils. Usually, it gets none.

Of course, I appreciate that in some areas the going lesson rate is low, but around here there’s no such issue, and someone advertising £16 lessons is only doing it to try and get work. In fact, he will have to be doing 30% more lessons than me just to make the same profit – and yet he’s doing this because he’s probably working 50% less hours and desperately needs to fix it! The same undercutting is happening on a pro rata basis everywhere. £7 an hour is a hell of a price to pay to – at best – tread water.

Finally, those lower profits enhance the need to cut costs, which will inevitably affect the lesson quality (less driving to save fuel expenditure). This, in turn, affects reputation, and that prevents referrals and can easily lead to loss of pupils, who know when they’re being taken for a ride.

This is where I think the problem lies. How long can newcomers survive with rising costs in this recession, when they’re on their own without a pupil base, and are charging £7 less than the going rate? Yet still you hear advice about going it alone!

Speaking personally, I’ve got a good pupil base and good referrals – and it took time to build that up. I’ve been doing a minimum of about 25-30 hours (except in the snow last year) and a maximum of 50 hours (once) throughout 2011. My average seems to be between 33-37 hours, and 2012 looks set to continue the same way.

Unfortunately, those charging silly prices couldn’t run a viable business even if they had the same level of work as me! The costs involved in running a driving school ensure that.

I noticed on a web forum someone handing out advice to an instructor who had asked about starting a blog. The advice given suggests that blogs are “dangerous” because you can “betray a confidence” or “upset someone”.

What made me smile is the fact that the advice comes from someone who is opinionated (no problem with that), often criticises (sometimes validly, sometimes not; after all, that’s the nature of opinions) other people’s and establishments’ opinions and practices (e.g. pupils, other instructors, the DSA, etc.), and has their driving school name plastered across every forum comment they make!

And yet they claim that a blog – particularly an anonymous one – is “dangerous”? It’s not even in the same league as opinionated forum posts where someone’s driving school is there for all to see.

In fact, there are a lot of driving instructors starting blogs now. I’d like to think that this one has inspired some of them to a small degree (I know two, at least, who openly cite this one as their inspiration; and a handful of others who would never admit to it, but who have apparently never heard of “plagiarism”). All a blog is is a collection of thoughts and opinions. The fact that it’s a “blog post” instead of a “forum post” doesn’t make its content any different or significant (mind you, I think having comments turned off has a lot to do with the way some people see that).

A blog is as dangerous as the reader makes it. Read too much into it – or have a poorly disguised agenda when disagreeing with the content – and it can seem (or be made to seem) a lot more dangerous than it is. I’m sure that some people who have only ever encountered this blog through references on web forums have automatically acquired a negative view about it from those forums. And yet the content is similar to what you can read anywhere.

I do the blog because I enjoy writing – it’s the modern-day equivalent of a diary or similar record. I also do it because I can, although it isn’t as hard to start one as people think. I get lots of complimentary messages, along with the very occasional hate-mail from people frustrated that they can’t argue or leave abusive comments. Having comments turned off prevents the blog from degenerating into slanging matches – something forum administrators have a full-time job trying to manage.

I’ve had poorly disguised attempts at trying to get my phone number or address by trying to book lessons (it’s anonymous, and isn’t used for personal advertising) – the best one was some guy trying to book for his daughter (in the message title) and his son (in the main text) using some very bad grammar. Lord knows what these people would do if they succeeded – I doubt that many of them know themselves! Others make contact, but then do not acknowledge my response, and people seem unaware that IP addresses which match closely with driving school locations advertised on messages in forums can hint at a lot of things when they come together at the same time.

As I’ve said many times: this blog is a collection of my own thoughts and opinions. People don’t have to read it. And it’s a lot less “dangerous” than some of what you read on web forums…

And to anyone thinking of starting one: do it! It’s great fun.