Category - ADI

More on Test Centre Closures

12/04/2011
DOAADI
ADI, Driving Tests, World

I’ve written several times recently about test centre closures – both real and imagined – and the subsequent behaviour of ADIs in the areas covered by the centres in question.

This report in Herald Scotland pushes further the idea that tests could be conducted from a variety of locations – supermarkets, libraries, community centres, and so on.

The article says:

The test centres are self-funding, with costs paid by learners sitting their tests. But is thought the savings would help pay for the £71 million cost of building 66 multi-purpose test centres across Britain.

I’m not sure if that is quite correct. MPTCs were not built to be LESS efficient than what was there previously. They were built to be MORE efficient. It stands to reason that ONE MPTC on an industrial estate is going to cost less to run than TWO or THREE community-based test centres shoe-horned above shops and into converted terraced houses in run-down estates. The explanation given above is another Mickey Mouse coalition way of trying to blame things on Labour.

And let’s not forget something no one else appears to be mentioning. The publicity may be centred upon the ramblings of certain self-styled community champions (“we MUST keep a testing facility in our village… won’t someone PLEEEASE think of the children”), but 90% of the public detest learner drivers and would like nothing better than for the test centre next door to bugger off somewhere else.

Driving 15 miles to the nearest test centre is not the problem people like Mike Weir and Sandra Osborne suggest. Some people have to do that anyway (I had one last week who lived 17 miles from the test centre, and several more greater than 10 miles away), and I’d like to see where it is written that no one should ever have to end up travelling further than they do now just because their local centre moves somewhere else.

Commonsense is being swallowed up and masked by amateurish political schemings.

I wonder if those supermarkets, libraries, and community centres will “allow” tests to be conducted for free?

And one more thing: test centres being further away would be less of a problem if local councils did their bloody roadworks more efficiently instead of digging big holes, putting up barriers and lights, and then doing naff all for two months. The biggest worry when travelling is not the distance, but the time.

Gypsies Stripped of Licences

12/04/2011
DOAADI
ADI, DSA, World

I hope it isn’t just gypsies who have this happen to them – it should happen to anyone who is found to be involved in the same type of fraud.

This story in the Daily Mirror reports that almost 150 Irish travellers paid around £500 per test to have some one do it for them, netting the crooks doing the impersonating somewhere around £150,000.

Two women and a man have had to flee their homes as angry gypsies try to get their money back (obviously, these gypsies aren’t bright enough to realise their own fraudulent position in all this – there is no money to “get back” because the people paying it are as guilty of fraud as those taking it).

The three criminals will be sentenced later this year.

According to the DSA, around 5,000 fraudulent driving tests of this type take place.

Keisha Wall Sentenced to Prison

12/04/2011
DOAADI
ADI, World

I wrote a few weeks ago about the case of a woman, Keisha Wall, who read a text message on her mobile phone shortly before ramming into a pedestrian and killing her (here, here, and here).

This article in the Daily Mail reports that she has been jailed.

She arrived at court holding a mobile phone! She’s been jailed for 2½ years.

As reported previously – and repeated in the article here – she was sitting next to her mother, Constance Wall, who is a driving instructor. Let’s hope that “is” soon becomes “was”, because her mother did not at any time appear to tell the truth during the case (I base that comment on the decision made by the jury). I’ll correct that, because I just saw a more detailed account. There’s something weird going on, because her mother wasn’t called on to give evidence. I don’t know about you, but I’d say that the person sitting right next to the accused at the time of the then-alleged crime (i.e. the passenger) would be a bloody good first choice witness!

Wall’s defence said:

She will have to live with the circumstances of that very short episode for the rest of her life.

She is extremely sorry and remorseful for what has happened. That remorse is deep felt, genuine and long-lasting. She is law abiding and supportive of her younger siblings.

No she isn’t. She’s a filthy liar who killed someone. She lied in court, which hardly makes her “law abiding”, and being “remorseful” didn’t stop her from lying, did it?

Still, she’ll be out in little more than a year.

Dangerous Cycling Law

11/04/2011
DOAADI
ADI, General

Uncle AlbertThis one is timely. With the sun, and the first leaves appearing with the Cherry blossom, prattus spandexius is now out of hibernation.

You’ll see him – typically with a full-face beard and/or the physique of Thunderbird 2 – pretending to be fit on country lanes and other places where he can cause maximum inconvenience. On weekends, he’ll be part of a gang – almost invariably with one of the gang members being a dead ringer for Uncle Albert and riding one of those lie-down bikes – deliberately riding two or three abreast to hold traffic back.

So this story in the Guardian is interesting – maybe not for exactly the reasons I’d like to think, but it should give prattus spandexius something to think about next time he tries to act like a rolling road block if it ever actually happens.

In 2008, a cyclist hit a teenager and killed her. He was found guilty of dangerous cycling – he shouted to a group of teens “move, because I’m not stopping”. He didn’t, and he killed the girl. He was fined £2,200. There isn’t a specific law covering dangerous cycling like there is for driving.

It’ll be interesting to see how far this goes.

Ten Year Ban “Excessive”?

11/04/2011
DOAADI
ADI, General, World

One from Canada. The Winnipeg Sun reports that a woman who killed two men and seriously injured a third is appealing against her 10 year ban – saying it is “harsh and excessive”.

Apparently, she hit the accelerator thinking it to be the brake. She accelerated suddenly and swerved across the street, hit another vehicle and tore out a fire hydrant. She pushed the other vehicle into a pedestrian, who was seriously injured. Her own vehicle carried on across the intersection and hit two men, who died at the scene.

Her defence lawyer argues that she is a capable driver who suffered momentary inattention.

This seems at odds with the fact that at the original trial she appears to have been an inexperienced driver who had taken refresher lessons.

It’s obviously a tragic story (for those who were killed), but what caught my eye was the length of the ban. Ten years is a hell of a long time.

I just wish they did that over here. Ten years? It isn’t long enough. Some people simply shouldn’t be allowed to drive.

Elderly Driver Injures Cyclist… Banned

11/04/2011
DOAADI
ADI, General

This is an interesting story from The Bolton News.

A 90 year old driver, Thomas Clark, has been banned from driving after he pulled out of a junction and seriously injured a cyclist.

His defence lawyer argues that he has never been involved in an accident before, and he relies on driving to get around and help a housebound 85 year old friend.

However, the housebound friend lives 55 miles away – and Clark has also pleaded guilty to driving with defective eyesight!

There comes a time in everyone’s life when they can’t do what they used to be able to do.

Driving is one of them.

Another Test Centre Closure?

11/04/2011
DOAADI
ADI, General

I’ve recently mentioned several situations where one of the following is true:

  • start petition because test centre is scheduled to close
  • start petition because scheduled test centre closure has now happened
  • start petition because test centre closed down several years ago, and since one of the others appeared to get somewhere, we might too
  • there is no real evidence that the test centre is closing, but we haven’t got much on so let’s start a petition anyway

Now there’s another one up in Cumbria (perilously close to Scotland, where a lot of the other unrest seems to be centred). Please note an updated story from the same source, which quotes the same instructors saying the same things – but which also adds something from the DSA.

The story here appears to be that the Theory Test facility is transferring from Workington, Cumbria, to Carlisle. The distance between these two locations is about 30 miles. As the report says, a maximum of 80 people a week take their theory tests in Workington – that isn’t many, and having no more than 16 people a day doing the test is hardly a sound justification for keeping open a facility which has an overhead which must run into quite a few tens of thousands when you consider the staffing and IT costs. But the main beef is simply – as the report puts it – that:

The cost-cutting move has sparked suspicion that practical driving tests will also be moved next year.

Now, it’s worth noting the DSA’s response to this:

The DSA relies for income on the fees we receive from our customers so we have a duty to spend that money responsibly while maintaining a good level of service.

There are no plans to withdraw the practical test service from Workington. However, maintaining a theory test centre in Workington is simply not cost-effective so we plan to close the centre at the end of August. Candidates from Workington will be able to use the existing theory test centre in Carlisle.

It couldn’t be clearer, could it? Not unless you’re an ADI (cars OR motorcycles, if you read the articles), of course, in which case it is as clear as mud.

Some cleverdick has had his calculator out and argues that 80 tests a week at £31 a time equals around £124,000 a year. Maybe for his next trick, he’d like to try using the minus key to subtract the salaries of the staff used to administer tests, those used to maintain the computers (whether on-site or otherwise), building rent and overheads, and so on. Without knowing the exact figures, I wouldn’t be surprised if the costs are greater than the turnover – BECAUSE 80 TESTS A WEEK ISN’T MANY.

They’ve already got the local MP on the case. As we all know, the job of the local MP is to take up any case – no matter how pointless – to show that he cares.

If only he also understood.

Ignores Highway Code… But Still a Great Driver

08/04/2011
DOAADI
ADI, General

This is a bit of a rehash of something that comes around every year or so, but it still makes interesting reading in Fleet News.

A survey by Autoglass (the article marks this with an asterisk, but doesn’t appear to include the footnote to explain why) says that 76% of motorists say they haven’t read the Highway Code since they passed their tests, 21% say they regularly break the HC, and 68% say they break it now and again. Around 40% reckon they break 30mph speed limits, 9% don’t indicate, 5% admit to using mobiles (utter bollocks – it’s more like 50%), and 4% jump red lights.

But 62% rated themselves as “good” and 22% rated themselves as “excellent”.

Nissan Leaf: Culture Shock

08/04/2011
DOAADI
ADI, General, World

At last, a real world EE Times review of the Nissan Leaf and an insight into what happens when you do anything other than read the manufacturer’s specification sheet and live in fantasy land.

Charging seems a little confusing, but this is an American review and they have a 110V electrical system over there. It appears that a UK charge cycle from a home mains outlet would take 13 hours (26 hours in the US, unless you buy a 220V adapter). Charging time also appears to be heavily influenced by the ambient temperature.

As the article says:

Most Leaf owners would not want to put up with such a long charging time, unless they could limit their driving so as not to go below about half a full charge.

Quite. So you can buy a 3.3kW charging dock which costs around $2,200 when “installed in a new construction” (i.e. a newly built house as part of the design, so it isn’t a simple affair). Using this, a full charge cycle takes 8 hours (that’s just from the literature though – the reviewer hasn’t actually tested one).

For an extra $700 you can have a cord supplied so you can use 50kW charger kiosks that are supposed to be appearing everywhere. And the Leaf also has a feature to limit charging to only 80% so the batteries last longer (I told you about the damage the 50kW chargers do in a previous article on this subject). Of course, in simple terms 80% charge means only 80% of the maximum range – so 100 miles becomes 80 miles. Or does it?

The reviewer says that on full charge the range display read “93 miles”, but on driving for only 2.7 miles with the heater and headlights on this fell to 77 miles. He also indicates that the maximum “93 miles” fell to 82 miles when the climate control was on…

But the car can run with outside air flowing through the cabin without the climate control on (much like back in the day when most cars did not have air conditioning).

Sounds great, doesn’t it? Still, Mark Goodier seems to have sufficiently low standards to still be gushing about it, whilst simultaneously ignoring the blindingly obvious limitations.

I still want to know how far it will actually go without a charge and with the climate control and lights on. Otherwise, a very good review.

Biofuels? You’re Killing Me!

08/04/2011
DOAADI
ADI, General, World

This is an interesting little snippet from Aircargo Asia-Pacific:

Biofuels ‘driving third world death rates higher’

A report in the UK’s Times newspaper by author Matt Ridley says an Australian government official has claimed that if the world stopped emitting CO2 today, global temperatures would not drop “for hundreds of years”.

He also said that studies in the Journal of Coastal Research indicate that while sea levels are rising (presumably as a result of global warming), the rate is slowing.

He added that biofuel crops may have caused 192,000 additional deaths in 2010 due to their disproportionate impact on malnutrition rates in third world countries.

I hadn’t seen the Times article (and I can’t find it – but I haven’t tried that hard), so this was news to me. The author, Matt Ridley (link now dead), has a book recently published… I’m sure that this is purely coincidental.