General - Diary Of An ADI

Wind Turbines Get Go Ahead

24/09/2013

For a couple of years now, residents in Stoke Bardolph have been campaigning against the proposed installation of wind turbines in their picturesque village alongside the River Trent. The slogan “Too Big. Too Close” has been used on signs erected by almost all those living there – and by many in Burton Joyce. Stoke Bardolph next to the Trent

So it is interesting to note that in spite of all that, Gedling Borough Council has voted in favour of the plans.

Severn Trent is also involved in this. To those who don’t know, they are the people who cannot handle a phone call to report a water leak – behaving as though they’ve never had one before – and who, even when the leak is acknowledged and identified, will ignore it for weeks or months. After that, standard procedure is to dig a hole, erect temporary traffic lights, and then do sod all for at least a fortnight.

Still, being part of Nottinghamshire’s councils, I suppose Gedling Borough Council has to find some way of ruining the countryside. Being so close to the river means that approving plans to build thousands of houses is always going to be a non-starter. So it will just have to be wind turbines.

Nottingham Road Works Just Get Even More Stupid

11/09/2013

DOAADI

ADI, General, Transport

There is a word that rhymes with “banker”. It describes completely those people who allegedly “work” for the County Council and Rushcliffe Borough Council.

Tonight I was wending my way along a route designed to take me as far away from Wilford Lane (and the tram closure there) as possible in order to go home. I’d successfully gone from Woodborough to Edwalton, heading towards Keyworth, when guess what? The berks had cut the A606 near to the Wheatcroft Garden Centre down to a single lane. It looks for all the world that they’re farting about putting a new pedestrian dropped kerb!

I’ve said it before, but it is a deliberate policy to cause as much disruption to motorists as possible. It can’t possibly be anything else. It’s just one major blockage after another, and Nottingham is becoming an absolute pit to live and work in.

I also noticed today that they (City Council, I think) are replacing the street lighting along Swansdowne Drive in Clifton – the only route remaining between the Varney Road shops and the Ruddington side. There are yellow barriers around every street light, and there’s no way traffic is going to be able to get by while they’re pulling out lamp posts and putting new ones in.

Dance If You Want A Job

07/09/2013

DOAADI

General, News

I came across this on the BBC website. It tells how a university graduate, Alan Bacon, applied for a job with Currys. Instead of being able to demonstrate why he’d be good in the photographic department in the interview, he was made to dance to a pop song.

Currys has apologised, and claims that it was not part of its official interview procedure.

Of course it wasn’t. But as the article points out – and many readers will probably have seen it anyway – this kind of idiotic “interviewing” was used in the recent fly-on-the-wall documentary series, The Call Centre.

Something frighteningly similar even happened to me once. It was part of the big Teamworking rollout in the early 90s, and the managers and team leaders were on a compulsory week-long residential course at a hotel in Sherwood Forest. The course facilitators were the usual bunch of extrovert prats, and one day we were told that there was “a forfeit” for something we were supposed to be doing that day – which was to put on a play for the hotel staff. It was no surprise to discover that we subsequently had to pay the forfeit.

I remember saying calmly: “Let me explain something. I have a phobia of acting, so I’m telling you now I’m not doing it. I’ll do stuff backstage, I’ll help to organise it, but I am NOT going to perform in front of people. And that’s final.”

This opened the flood gates. One of my team leaders was nearly in tears over the possibility of having to do it – and was ready to punch one of the facilitators (I had to restrain him). None of the others were keen, either. Only my opposite number on the other shift was almost wetting himself over the prospect, but he was a recent graduate, and dressing up (ideally in drag) was something he missed desperately. The play never went ahead.

Even as long ago as the mid-80s the typical management course would involve “ice-breaking exercises”. Indeed, the very first graduate course I went on involved such an exercise, where we had to lie on the floor and others drew around our heads to get a profile. These were then hung on the wall (using Blu-tac, of course) for the duration. But there were dozens of others over the years. Even my time in technical support for another division of the same group Currys is part of – while I was training as an ADI – required throwing sponge balls around. And First Aid training also involved similar stunts.

In the case of Alan Bacon, Currys offered him another interview with the apology. He wisely turned them down – but I think he still might have a few unpleasant surprises coming his way as he embarks upon his working life.

Currys reckons it is dealing with the idiot staff responsible. I’ll bet they still have jobs at the end of it.

Long Hot Summer 2013

31/08/2013

DOAADI

General, News

Summer 2013 has been the warmest, driest, and sunniest since 2006. It’s likely to be one of the top 10 hottest, 16th driest, and 7th sunniest since records began. This is official – from the Met Office.

I think it’s important that we remind ourselves of what the Met Office was saying only three months ago. It was reporting that we’d have no summers for the next decade – The Guardian reported on this, as did The Independent, and the Daily Mail, etc. The best part in all the reports was:

Met Office experts who got together to discuss recent unusual weather patterns predicted yesterday that Britain faces a decade of wet summers.

Of course, everyone knows what this summer has really been like – after all, when one is classed as “the 16th driest” it can hardly be simultaneously classed as a wet one. It’s still going on even now, as we enter autumn, and it looks likely to continue for a while yet if the Jetstream forecasts are anything to go by.

But I’m surprised that no one has hit on the Met Office over this. They haven’t successfully forecast any single part of this summer – when you look at the original stories, it was like them betting their entire pile of chips on red, but having it come up black. They were 180° degrees wrong!

Mind you, this year has thankfully been free of any involvement by Exacta or Jonathan Powell.

Scumbag Teen Driver Kills Pensioner

24/08/2013

DOAADI

General

A reader sent me the link for this story. Daniel Brownlee, 19, has admitted causing death by dangerous driving. It happened in North Shields, where Brownlee got up to speeds of around 104mph. His victim was Roy Toogood, 66.

Sentence will be passed in mid-September, but another interesting detail to the story (as pointed out by the reader who provided the link) is that Brownlee’s father was also in the dock. He is charged with making a false statement in order to get insurance for the vile scumbag who passes as his son.

I won’t pass comment on that yet, as the charges are still “allegations”.

I was thinking something yesterday, though. In fact, when I’m driving around I often start thinking about this kind of thing. There’s me and a pupil in a positive, life-enhancing situation (driving lesson) – but look out of the window and I see what could easily be part of a parallel universe. Dirty-looking, unshaven, hoodie-wearing people on bikes, hanging into car windows, or carrying open cans of Special Brew. It’s where they come from which can easily throw up people like the Brownlees (certainly the son, and allegedly the father).

Does The Driving Test Prepare People For Driving Alone?

22/08/2013

DOAADI

General

In the previous article, I wrote about the appalling attitude of two young drivers who believed they had managed to scrape test passes by going to “easier” test centres, having failed at “harder” ones several times previously.

There is another hot topic at the moment, which deals with the suggestion that young drivers are not adequately prepared for driving alone when they pass their tests. The allegation is complete bollocks, of course, but it wouldn’t be right to just leave it at that – without explaining why it is bollocks!

The root of the story is found in yet more pointless “survey” material, this time by the Co-operative Insurance company. They have discovered the following:

40% of young drivers in the East of England say they have had an accident while driving.20% feel this this could have been avoided if they had taken more time to learn to drive before passing their test.60% think that people should have to learn to drive for a certain period of time before taking their driving test.

To make matters worse, the Driving Instructors’ Association (DIA) is quoted:

There is no mandatory requirement to learn for a minimum period with a qualified professional instructor. There is an advisory guidelines of 46 hours, with a further 20 hours accompanied practice with a parent, but many pupils are focused on the lowest number of lessons for the cheapest price. We need to start getting parents and learners focused on what an important life skills learning to drive is, and investing in the right number of lessons with a properly qualified, professional instructor.

There IS NO “advisory guideline” of the sort. The DSA’s statistics show that typically, those passing their tests have had 46 hours of lessons with an instructor, and at least 20 hours of private practice. It is not advice, or a prediction – it’s just a measurement of what is.

Another version of the same story adds:

Almost a third of young drivers felt unprepared to drive alone when they passed their test, according to research published today.

Many young motorists feel driving lessons are failing to get them ready them for life on the road, with 29 percent of those aged 18-30 feeling unfit to drive solo when they earned their full licences.

It’s not “research”. It’s just a survey, whose results cannot be taken as absolute evidence because they are based on opinion and are highly subjective. Why are they subjective? Well, the survey didn’t seek to obtain this information, but it is a pretty safe bet that of those people questioned did everything within their power to take as few lessons as possible – and quite possibly emigrated to “easier” test centres in order to avoid having to learn anything difficult.

In addition, 29 percent felt they were not ready for night driving, 21 percent considered driving lessons did not prepare them to drive with passengers, 19 percent avoided city centres, 14 percent could not face driving in the rain and 8 percent avoided right turns.

A total of 18 percent passed their driving test after spending three months or less learning to drive and 50 percent took six months or less to pass, the survey by Co-operative Insurance found.

It’s worrying that people of the standard alluded to even got their licences in the first place, but what do these figures actually prove?

In short, nothing! The driving test has always been the first step on a lifelong learning curve. No new driver has ever driven on their own when they pass their tests – not legally, anyway – so it has always been part of the deal that the first solo drive can be a little nerve-wracking.

I remember when I passed my test. I couldn’t afford a car straight away and so it was a year between passing and going out on my own in that Ford Escort Estate I’d bought. I’d not even thought about it until that first day – but that was when I suddenly realised I was really on my own, with no one giving me directions, and no one there to hit the brakes if I didn’t. I always explain to my pupils that the first time out alone is probably an experience they won’t have anticipated.

If I remember correctly, some of my lessons were in the dark. I learned during the winter, and even my test at Chalfont Drive finished in failing light. My lessons were usually around the rush hour on weekdays, or on Saturday afternoons, and my pick up location was always near The Dolphin pub (no longer there) just off Shakespeare Street in Nottingham – right in the middle of the City Centre. And I can remember the car steaming up in heavy rain because there was no air-conditioning back then.

Speaking as an instructor now, some of my pupils start their lessons in spring and pass before summer is over (I had one a few weeks ago whose 17th birthday was 18 June, he passed his theory test 19 June, had his first lesson with me 21 June, and passed his test first time on 26 July with no private practice between lessons). On the other hand, I get a lot of pupils who only ever have lessons in winter – indeed, my first ever pupil took all his lessons in the dark! Although I do try to get them to take at least a couple of lessons at other times, it’s horses for courses. Driving in the dark isn’t difficult – in many ways, it’s easier than driving in the middle of the day – and the only problems for new drivers in the dark arise from driving too fast and not realising their own limitations. It’s not their skills, but their attitudes which are lacking.

The second news story concludes:

AA president Edmund King said: “It is worrying that so many young drivers feel the driving test does not prepare them adequately for elements of life on the road.”

It would be worrying if they truly weren’t prepared. But as it stands, they’re just whingeing about having had accidents and looking for scapegoats, when the real problem is with the attitudes they carry about with them when they’re on the roads.

Quality Private Practice Counts

04/08/2013

DOAADI

ADI, Driving Tests, General

This thought has occurred to me on and off for quite a while now. I often mention it to pupils when they say they’ve been out driving with their mum or dad, or whoever. But one pupil in particular has hammered it into my brain recently.

Her husband is called… well, let’s call him Ray. She drives me mad (in a harmless way) – especially at the start of lessons – when almost every sentence will start with “Ray said…”

Not long after she’d started with me, she got in the car one lesson and immediately said:

Ray said you shouldn’t park next to a lamp post.

I’d parked near one (it was level with the back door) so I could open the passenger door. I explained that this was nonsense and the only thing you had to make sure of is that passengers could open the doors if necessary. But that set the stage for all lessons since.

I should point out that Ray is – or was, until recently – a taxi driver.

A few weeks ago, we were driving away from her house. The speed limit goes from 30mph, up to 40mph, then up to 60mph over about half a mile or so. Even before we’d driven off and gone round the first roundabout, I’d had at least four “Ray said…” answers to my advice and questions.

The next thing I know, we’re accelerating rapidly in the 30mph zone with the 40mph several hundred metres away – we’re over 35mph when this conversation took place:

Me: Hey, hey, hey! What’s the speed limit here?

She: Ray said it’s OK to speed up

Me: [I hadn’t yet realised she was accelerating for the 40mph zone] The speed limit is 30mph, so slow down!

She: But Ray said it’s OK to get ready for the 40mph speed limit.

Me: [using the duals controls to slow us down] What? The speed limit is 30mph here…

She: But Ray said…

Me: That’s it! Take the next left and pull over [we pull over]
Me: What do you mean “Ray said it’s all right”? The speed limit is 30mph and you were aiming for 40. The 40mph sign is miles away. What do you think would happen if a speed camera saw you doing 40mph in a 30mph zone? Would you get a fine?

She: Well… but Ray said…

Me: Look. I’ve had enough of what Ray said. Who are you paying to teach you to drive? Me or him? He’s a taxi driver, and they’re not especially renowned for their driving abilities.

As an aside, that reminds me of another conversation with this pupil via text (I’d asked her to book her test for early August):

She: Can I book my test for July [date]?

Me: Well, it’s a bit earlier than we said. Do YOU think you’ll be ready?

She: You’re the driving instructor, that’s why I’m asking YOU.

Me: OK, book it – but this is on the strict understanding that if you’re not ready then we will move it. Are we agreed on that?

She: Yes. But Ray said he will help.

Me: How? Is he going away?

She thought that was really funny (and we DID have to move the test). But back to the first conversation, later in the lesson – and I can’t remember what prompted it – we had this exchange:

Me: Has Ray got any points on his licence?

She: [pauses] Well, he will have.

Me: What for? [I then had a thought] Hey, they’re not for speeding are they?

She: I wasn’t going to mention it. But yes – but it’s not like what happened back there.

Me: I’ll bet.

She: No, it wasn’t…

I won’t go into full details, but it still demonstrated a lack of road skill on Ray’s part – and he’d obviously told her to break the speed limit, so he must have been prepared to do it himself.

Then there was the Nuthall Roundabout Situation (cue: soundtrack from Pulp Fiction). A few weeks ago we were heading towards this along Woodhouse Way (A6002), and I’d prompted her through it for the A611.

Earlier this week, again approaching the roundabout from the same direction, the conversation went like this:

Me: We’re coming up to the Nuthall roundabout. Now, we’re going straight ahead down the A610 this time – not the A611 like last time. Can you remember how to do it [she apparently does this a lot with Ray, and has “no problems”]
She: Erm… well…

Me: [we’re closing in] Look for A610 on the road. You need to keep to the right, remember… Can you remember how to do it? [She heads straight for the left hand lane marked ‘M1’]
Me: OK. So that would be a “no” then… [I twitch the car over to the right hand lane]… now, look at where it says A610… [we stop at the lights]… Plan ahead. Look for where it says “A610” on the road lanes… [we move off and head straight for the A611 lane, which means cutting other traffic up. I grab the wheel and get us back in the correct lane]
She: Oh, I normally go that way with Ray. I didn’t know you meant this way.

Me: That’s why I said we weren’t going down the A611 like last time, and why I repeatedly said A610 and to look for “A610” on the road.

And just for the icing on the cake, right at the start of the lesson I had asked her to go straight ahead, 2nd exit at a small roundabout. The lanes are clearly marked with white arrows. She makes straight for the right-turn only one. Her justification for this?

That’s the lane I normally use with Ray when I go to see people up here.

This time, I pulled her over and just explained that Ray obviously wasn’t picking up her faults.

So, as usual I have come to my point in a very roundabout (no pun intended) way. And it is this:

Whenever you do private practice, make sure it isn’t just to “go to the shops” or for mum or dad to have a drink so that they don’t have to drive (which is just as illegal as drinking and driving, anyway).
Go out for practice, and only practice.
Practice the things you aren’t good at, not the things you are.
If it becomes apparent mum or dad (or whoever takes you out) is missing faults, get them to sit in with you on a lesson and let your instructor point out what they should be looking for.

Common missed faults include:

MSM
mirrors on overtaking or slowing down
not looking properly at junctions and roundabouts (emerging)
steering
braking (too late/too harsh)
roundabouts
lanes
speed and speed limits

This is by no means all of them. They are often missed because mum or dad (or whoever) isn’t as good a driver as they might like to think.

Being taught the wrong things – or being allowed to do the wrong things without being picked up for them – leads to bad habits, and bad habits are far harder to break than they are to form.

They also lead to failed driving tests.

Woman In Russia Displays Her De-parking Skills

26/07/2013

DOAADI

Bad Drivers, Funny, General, World

I found this video posted recently on YouTube. A young woman – who has already demonstrated how not to park by sitting diagonally in a parking bay – proceeds to demonstrate the corresponding opposite procedure of how not to de-park.

I should point out that all the action occurs in the first couple of minutes. Once she’s reversed into that other car nothing else happens. The footage is from a building CCTV system somewhere in Russia.

It’s clear that she hits the wrong pedal, then panics and doesn’t know what to do – making the situation worse. She manages to stop in time, but then panics further and hits the other parked car.

I Hate Hot Weather!

16/07/2013

DOAADI

ADI, General

Bloody hell, it’s hot! Hard to imagine that back in June the Daily Mail – and all the other main comics – was telling us (following a séance run by the Met Office, I believe) there’d be no summers for the next decade. Even The Guardian was at it.

The fact is that what ever happens for the rest of the year, the recent hot weather has already gone on for long enough for this year to be genuinely cast as a “barbecue summer”. In fact, it looks like we’re set for it to stay like this until the end of July, if the non-Met Office jet stream predictions hold up. So much for the prediction of 10 summerless summers!

Personally, I hate the hot weather. I always have, ever since I was about 11 on holiday in Skegness and got sunstroke (my back peeled less than 4 hours after exposure). I keep out of the sun as a result – just in case! But the humidity is what really gets to me. I hate sweating when I’m working on something, and on lessons I have to use the aircon. I don’t mind that too much (apart from the extra fuel cost, which is noticeable), but it does dehydrate you even more, which means drinking more water, which means having to find somewhere to take a leak several times a day.

And don’t get me started on summer holidays. My idea of heaven is going skiing in the depths of winter. I much prefer the cold weather, although snow in the UK no longer makes me as happy as it used to do because of the adverse effects it has on this job.

Going back to that jet stream a moment, a few days ago the forecast was for it to drop into Europe around 23rd July. The forecast now is for it to drop around 27th or 28th July. So it’s already changed, which just goes to show how forecasts can never be relied upon. But looking at the current forecast, if the jet stream does drop as far south as is predicted at the end of the month we’d better get ready for some seriously Biblical (as in “Genesis”) weather.

(Edit: I wrote all that on 16th July. As of 19th July it looks like things might break again around the 23rd/24th July).

Driving Instructor Claims Spark ASA Investigation

15/07/2013

DOAADI

ADI, General, News

The ASA received complaints about claims being made by a driving instructor on his website. Kelvin White, of Tiverton, was claiming a first time pass rate of 80% and someone made a complaint.

He has since removed the claims. In reading his comments in that article in This Is The West Country, he seems to be another instructor who either doesn’t understand statistics, or one who understands them all too well. You see, the problem is that ADIs are always looking for a USP (unique selling point) and although pass rates are hardly unique, very high ones are perceived as being so.

No ADI in the UK with a statistically significant number of tests under his belt can claim 100%. However, if he is selective with his data then he can sometimes get very close.

At one point this year (2013), my first time pass rate was 100%. But at the start of last year even my overall pass rate was 0% (a single pupil failed his test four or five times in a relatively short period, and I don’t think anyone else had a test in the same period). Pass rates are great when they’re high, but they are awful when they’re low, and people who put them on their websites are not going to report low ones.

I don’t quote pass rates on my school website. I mention them on here from time to time, and I only use figures for the calendar year in question because that’s all that matters to me. It means a warts-and-all figure – it’s 57% for the year to date, with 12 passes from 21 tests – which is the only figure that comes even close to meaning anything. But if I wanted to be creative (and deliberately misleading), I could quote the percentage as a function of the number of pupils who have had tests, and that puts my percentage up to 70%. And although it didn’t occur to me to check it again until now, my first time pass rate – expressed as a percentage of my test passes – is 67%, although as a percentage of all tests it is only 38%. And I could really make the figures look good if I took out certain pupils – who would know?. You can see the problem here.

And claims made by individual schools for marketing purposes completely overlook the differences in pass rates in different parts of the same county and especially across the country as a whole. Test centres out in the sticks usually have higher local pass rates than those in the middle of dense urban conurbations – particularly if there is a lower proportion of non-UK nationals taking tests.

Kelvin White seems to object to the ASA’s requirement for pass rates to be updated monthly with evidence, instead of just six-monthly.

An ASA spokeswoman said: “We received a complaint about advertising on the Kelvin White Driving School website which stated ‘you will also benefit from our first time pass rate of over 80% across the whole of the driving school’.”

Again, you can see the problem. You can’t just select your favourite pass rate and then use it as a marketing slogan for ever and a day. It will change – probably downwards in the real world, especially if you chose a high one at the start – and once you start boasting about the good results you commit yourself to having to publicise the bad ones if you don’t want to fall foul of the ASA. And that is quite right.

Category - General