Category - ADI

This is an old article, so bear in mind any recent changes to the rules.

A reader submitted this link concerning the new MoT rules which have come into force.

It’s a bit alarmist, claiming that the rules “may trash your car”. After all, at least two of the examples it cites – faulty ABS and faulty seat-belt pre-tensioners – are very important, and failing an MoT because they’re broken serves the owner right.

I mean, if you’re going to insist on owning a car, you automatically accept that you need to keep it in a condition that isn’t going to kill other people (including your passengers). If you can’t afford it – or if you disagree with that responsibility – then you also accept the consequences, and tough luck!

VOSA – the Vehicle and Operator Service Agency, who manage MoT regulations – will not fully implement the changes until April. So at least that gives people some time to get things sorted out.

The article advises buying a 90s banger if you want to avoid the costly electronic gizmo hassle. Unfortunately, it glosses over that other major MoT problem. RUST. Not to mention mechanical wear-and-tear.

I’m not sure what my view on the EU-driven legislation is, because it doesn’t really concern me. However, just because people can’t afford it, or don’t like EU-legislation of any kind, isn’t a reason for it to be wrong.

Mind you, cars should be roadworthy – and many aren’t. So in that respect, I know what my view is!

We’ve not had one of these for a while, but another association is getting itself all confused over pass rates.

On the blog I’ve linked to pass rates for all UK test centres between April 2010 and February 2011. These are intended as a guide, and they will change slightly with time. During the period covered, Bradford’s two test centres had pass rates of 30.7% and 29.4%, compared to the National Average at the same time of 46.4%.

The article here is going on about the pass rates at Bradford’s two centres between April and August 2011 – presumably someone showing how clever they are by requesting the data under FOI – which were 30.1% (down insignificantly on my data by 0.6%) and 35% (up significantly by more than 5%) respectively.

A local “leading driving instructor” appears to be claiming that test fails are guaranteed at certain times of day…

…due to poor parking by other motorists at junctions.

The local association says:

Certain routes are such, at particular times, that even a good driver has difficulty getting out of a junction because cars are parked so close to corners, they are bound to fail at those times.

The same spokesman adds:

I could take a pupil to another test centre in another area and they would pass.

How many times have I heard that! How many of my pupils have failed “because of someone else” over the years? However, another spokesman from the same organisation says:

…congestion experienced along the Heaton test route was also to blame for the high failure rate, as well as poor preparation by some candidates .

I think that last thing is getting a little closer to the real reason for overall low pass rates.

Hasn’t anyone drawn the obvious conclusion here that the pass rate is lower than most other places because of the quality of the candidates? And that the standard of parking these people are complaining about is simply an example of a vicious circle – anyone who passes is likely to end up behaving in exactly the same way?

I’ve mentioned this before, but if you look for the highest pass rate – for Mallaig, in Scotland (Google Map it) – you will see that it has less than a dozen roads and only two of them join in such a way that you could avoid having to perform a turn in the road somewhere. I reckon that the total length of roads there must amount to less than 10km. The pass rate is over 70%, and I’m certain that many of mine who fail first time here could well pass first time up there – but I can’t prove that or do anything about validating it… because I don’t live there! And nor do those test candidates in Bradford.

Now, I won’t explain this in any greater detail, but Bradford is NOT the same as Mallaig. Nor is it alone in having “tricky” roads or idiot members of the public to deal with. Most cities have those.

That second spokesman adds:

Parked cars, inconsiderate road users – new drivers are not prepared for these circumstances.

They bloody well should be prepared – that’s what we get paid for! The bottom line is that you have to prepare your pupils for whatever they are going to have to cope with both on the test and in real life. You can’t start whingeing about them failing just because they’re not good enough to pass.

By all means try and get people to park better. But don’t blame test failures for it, when the people you’re teaching are going to behave in exactly the same way the second they pass.

The Halifax Courier refers to it as “research”. I sometimes wonder if these local papers know what that word actually means?

Apparently, drivers with a heavy cold should “think twice about getting behind the wheel” – according to this “new research”.

Driving: The Essential Skills – effectively the learner driver syllabus – says:

Fitness to drive

Don’t drive if you’re feeling tired or unwell. Even a cold can make it unsafe for you to drive . If you find you’re losing concentration or not feeling well, keep your speed down and give yourself more time to react.

Drugs

Medicines – check any medicines you’re taking to see if it affects your ability to drive. Even medicines for coughs and hay fever can make you drowsy.

So, perhaps we can assume that by “research” they mean that someone read this book?

The “research” is by an insurance company (Young Marmalade). The article goes on to regurgitate what is already written plainly in The Essential Skills as if it has just discovered this all by itself!

The whole point of the article is shot down by the police, who also mentioned the medication people might be taking:

If there is an accident and if someone is not fit to drive, careless driving might be there, but we would have to have evidence.

The entire point of the “research” is summed up by the insurance industry’s “suspicions” that a lot of “prangs” happen while people are “under the weather”. So, another piece of astounding science, eh?

Just when you think you’ve heard it all, a story like this comes along.

Patricia Aitken, 55, was involved in an accident in which a learner driver died. She allegedly  "lost consciousness" behind the wheel – claiming that the low-calorie diet she was on was responsible.

Here’s the good bit: she was sentenced – if you can call it a “sentence” – to 240 hours community service and banned for 5 years.

The story is somewhat confusing. Aitken apparently admitted “careless driving and causing the death of… Suzanne Harkness”, who was only 22. However, it later says that she “initially denied the charge, claiming her low-calorie diet caused her to black out moments before the head-on smash”. It then goes on to say (again):

Initially, Aitken claimed a low-calorie diet which she had been on for two days may have caused her to black out.

Aitken changed her plea to guilty after the Crown produced an expert medical report which dismissed the suggestion that the diet could have caused the loss of consciousness or fainting at the wheel.

Incredibly, the accident took place in August 2009, and yet it has only been dealt with now – and with such a ridiculous outcome.

Understandably, Suzanne Harkness’ family are unhappy with the result.

Admittedly, this is an example of Scottish justice at work, but perhaps someone can explain how this case is any different to Aitken’s? Surely, being a learner is a much better excuse than being on a diet? Yet the learner was jailed (rightly) for 2 years, whereas Aitken has got off scot-free (no pun intended). And why was Aitken not charged with causing death by dangerous driving? After all, she was on the wrong side of the road and her pathetic argument about the diet was refuted and dismissed.

Suzanne Harkness’ driving instructor was also seriously injured and lost consciousness, according to the report.

Meanwhile, Sheriff Donald Corke must be entered on the Register of Judges With No Sense Whatsoever, which already has a fair few English ones on it.

There is an e-petition doing the rounds at the moment (I was notified via the newsfeeds). Here’s the exact petition wording:

Regulate/stop parent/relatives/friends supervising learner drivers.

Responsible department: Department for Transport

We now have two instances whereby learner drivers have caused deaths while being supervised by unqualified persons. Mr Penning wants to stop unqualified instructors (PDIs) giving driving tuition, this should include parents/spouses/relatives/friends. The Government should either make it illegal for non qualified persons to give any driving instruction whatsoever to learner drivers, or force them to attend a training course before supervising learner drivers. If Mr Penning wants professional instructors to do motorway training, then ADIs should do all the training.

I am a fully qualified ADI. I never went down the trainee licence (pinkie) route. My current check test grade means I am considered pretty good, and I like to think my pass rate reflects that.

And I actively encourage my pupils to do quality private practice with mum or dad (or whoever) whenever possible.

If I get even a whiff of the possibility of them getting insured on mum or dad’s car, I push the subject hard. I often take mum or dad (or spouse/partner) out with us on a lesson to show them what to look for.

Young people have accidents for two main reasons:

• attitude
• inexperience

These two things are finely interwoven. However, the overriding complicating factor is that not all young people have a bad attitude, and not all of them are inexperienced to the point that it is a major issue. In other words, since the degree of interweaving can vary between none at all to almost total, and no one can actually say at what point it becomes a danger because no one can quantify it. Quite simply, not all young drivers have accidents, nor are they all likely to!

A driving instructor’s job is to turn someone who cannot drive into someone who can by dealing with the “inexperience” aspect. That’s all.

You see, the typical young learner spends maybe 1 or 2 hours with their instructor each week. They have another 150 or more to spend on doing stuff that has bugger all to do with the instructor – and they’ve also had at least 17 years in which to develop any attitude they might have. They can easily conceal (on purpose or otherwise) such attitudes during driving lessons. I mean, you’re not going to get many pupils admitting to being drug dealers, or to being on the run from doing a bank job on their driving lessons, anymore than you’ll get them boasting how they’re going to drive like complete prats when they pass.

Only a very mixed up person (and unfortunately, there are a fair few – in government AND on the Register) would ever believe that an ADI’s primary function is to change attitudes. “Lifestyle Coach and Driving Instructor” is the new advertising strapline for many.

By having mum and dad take them out, they can gain valuable road experience that, for financial reasons, they will quite possibly not get through their paid-for driving lessons. As I often say to my own pupils, you can learn all there is to know about driving in an hour or two, but being able to put it all safely into practice requires practice, which leads to experience, and that takes time.

Experience is one thing that cannot be hurried – but if the idea of having to pay for every second of it hurts, then the responsible learner will make sure they get it somewhere else. And that’s what I try to make mine do, knowing that they want to keep their spending on driving lessons to a minimum.

The e-petition is somewhat confusing. To begin with, it is clearly based on the two recent cases where a learner accidentally killed her mother, and where another learner accidentally killed a child.

At this stage, I would point out two other stories which I reported on the blog, where learners out with qualified instructors flipped the car and ruptured a gas pipe. And these are not isolated cases – I didn’t bother commenting on this one from a couple of days ago ( another learner flipping a car), and you only have to read the comments from instructors on web forums to know that accidents are not uncommon. Any of these could, under other circumstances, have resulted in deaths. Any significant accident could. An ADI sitting in the passenger seat is not a Cloak of Invincibility.

The saying “there but for the grace of God, go I” springs to mind, although I suspect the meaning will be far too subtle for many to understand.

The e-petition implies that these unfortunate deaths were a direct result of the supervising driver being unqualified. Even the second one, where the supervising driver appeared to be less capable than would be expected, could still happen even if an ADI were present. It may be less likely, but if we could foresee all possible circumstances then we’d all be gods instead of men.

The e-petition appears to confuse a number of issues. It somehow links the impending change to motorway rules to all other driving, and while I agree that this would be “neat and tidy”, there is a lot more that would have to be considered. After all, learners have never been allowed on motorways, nor is it going to be mandatory that they receive lessons on them, so there is no real issue to address with respect to mum and dad other than to warn them to keep off. On the other hand, tens of thousands of mums and dads are currently supervising their kids, and stopping this would have all sorts of social and financial implications.

The e-petition talks of supervising drivers taking “training courses”. This part makes some sense – but not when taken with all the other things the text mentions.

Overall, the e-petition is confused and doesn’t present anything like a workable solution. But more than that, it is trying to provide a solution to a problem which doesn’t really exist.

I’m sure most ADIs would welcome a system where only they were allowed to teach learners, or where any supervisor had to be trained by them. But that isn’t a basis for making it happen!

The e-petition needs 100,000 signatures before it will be considered for discussion in Parliament. It has less than 200 as I write this, and although I am sure quite a few more will sign it, 100,000 is a very large target. Once the usual agitators have had their fill, and signed just for the sake of it, the underlying questions over motive and clarity still remain.

Private practice – with mum and dad – is a vital part of the learning experience.

If anything should change, my view would be that learners should be required to take a minimum number of lessons with a qualified instructor before they go to test (along the lines of what Ireland has recently introduced), possibly with approval to put in for the test lying with the instructor (though I can see the likely opposition to that).