Salima Rashid (instructor) took money off pupils she’d taught, and split the money between two examiners (Nick Madigan is named as one). Rashid tried to lie her way out of it, but was found guilty and jailed for two years. Madigan pleaded guilty and is due to be sentenced next month.
A second examiner, Kulwinder Mann, has also been found guilty but will be sentenced later as he is apparently “unwell”.
Rashid’s pupils – all of them appear to be non-UK nationals – paid up to £1,000 a time. One of them passed, in spite of a near miss with a car during her test. Another pupil was failed by Madigan, then offered a pass in return for a sum of cash! This occurred at the Barking test centre.
The Calgary Herald says that City officials are considering building roundabouts as a solution to problems at 4-way stops and traffic lights.
Well, I suppose they’ve got to move into the 20th Century at some point – let’s hope they make it quickly into the 21st, where the rest of us are!
I do find the comments of a former driving instructor (Nicole McWhinney) amusing:
As long as everybody knows what they’re doing, everything is predictable, As soon as somebody’s unpredictable, then it causes chaos.
Yes. And as long as people are taught properly – and penalised if they behave “unpredictably” – then any road system works.
When I’m doing roundabout lessons with pupils, I often do my “History of…” routine, starting with when people rode in ox-carts between villages, moving on to horse-drawn carriages and horses, then the first motor vehicles, and going through crossroads, traffic light-controlled crossroads, roundabouts, and finishing with traffic light-controlled roundabouts. I haven’t got a clue if it’s historically correct (it’s near enough for my purposes), but it works.
A roundabout is merely a junction – often, a far less complicated one than one with loads of lights, stop signs, and areas you can’t enter. Countries which have steered clear of roundabouts have probably forced themselves into a bit of a corner, since normal light-controlled junctions can only deal with heavy traffic to a limited extent. They face the problem now that a roundabout might not actually help as much as they’d like.
This has to be one of the biggest non-stories you could ever have.
The AA has done a poll. Now, it isn’t clear if it is the AA who have concluded this, or if it is the media trying to make a boring story slightly less boring, but…
Parents are passing on road rage habits to their learner-driver children…
What misleading clap-trap! How do they pass it on? In their wills? Do they “bequeath” the skill to their offspring?
Everyone knows that children pick up habits and behaviours from people around them as they grow up – parents, friends, TV. Everything. Not just road rage, and not just when it comes to driving.
EVERYTHING.
And the behaviour is cultural. You go near one of those estates where they use the garden instead of a dustbin and you’ll see ten times more of this behaviour. Conversely, stop out side a school and you’ll see a dramatic increase in the CAUSE of such behaviour as diminuitive women in illegally- (and badly) parked BMW X3s and X5s try to mow down other people’s kids once they’ve picked up their own.
And another thing: why this crusade against road rage, as if someone who gets annoyed at morons trying to kill them is a child molester or something?
It is perfectly natural to get angry with people who cut you up and force you to brake or swerve.
The campaign should be against the morons – not against the rest of us.
EDIT 14/3/2011: Just adding this next bit later in the day – the same story is covered in Autoblog, but with considerably more commonsense and less childish, sensationalist editorial spin.
Speeding, tailgating, driving one-handed and a tendency for road rage are among the top 10 faults many learners copy from their mother and father.
The original AA survery is still superficial – but at least it isn’t saying what the original source suggested it was.
It’s funny how you write (or say) something, and then you come across news stories on similar topics.
I posted recently about insurance fraudsters (like Mr Wilson, the scumbag who tried it on with me some years ago – and lost), and the guy who pranged one of my ex-pupils, and then tried to blame it on her by lying (and last I heard, it looked like he was going to be found out).
An article in Car Rentals suggest that in the same vein, cases of staged car crashes are rising dramatically in line with the UK’s burgeoning problem of pathetic personal injury claims (which, in turn, came from the USA).
No doubt this sort of thing occurs to lesser minds as a way of subsidising their unemployment benefits during a recession. SO ADIs had better watch out – a learner is an easy target.
Remember all that stuff about “making the driving test harder” a few years ago? It was media mis-information and hyping surrounding an ongoing consultation and various reports that had been issued.
MPs are once again calling on the on the Government to modernise the driving test to make it more rigorous so that it properly prepares drivers for real world motoring …
The call comes from the cross party transport select committee as part of a report on the rising cost of motor insurance, especially for younger and newly qualified drivers…
…[ideas] include a minimum one-year learning period for drivers where newly-qualified drivers aged under 20 would be limited to carrying no more than one passenger aged under 20 during the first six months of driving…
…a two-tier licensing system in which novice drivers would hold a restricted licence for two years, at the end of which time there would be a further test…
…changing the driving test, to make it more difficult and more suitable for the skills new drivers need once they pass the test. It could also incorporate a section where candidates navigate their own route during the test…
Other ideas include pre-driving tests for 14 to 16 year olds, so that they are aware of the sort of pressures they will be under and the sort of skills they are going to need before they start taking their driving tests plus looking at ways of training learner drivers in motorway driving and other aspects of “independent driving”. The department also suggest replacing the “unsuccessful” Pass Plus advanced driving course for novice drivers with other means of enabling such drivers to show insurers that they are safe.
The most significant part is this bit, though:
However many of these suggestions were under consideration when the Labour Government produced a report on novice drivers in 2007.
Yes. And any ideas for change were opposed by this Mickey Mouse government we have now.
Just remember that any changes are years – possibly decades – away. This government will be long gone by the time anything significant gets through.
Despite the number of accidents falling and car safety improving there has been a dramatic increase in motorists and passengers saying they have been hurt and seeking compensation.
Yep. They’re called “liars” and “frauds”.
I warn all my pupils that if they have an accident or bump of any sort – no matter how slight – they must inform their insurance company. This isn’t to make a fraudulent claim – it is to protect themselves against the inevitable fraudulent claim that the other party will direct at them.
Over the years I have been driving, I’ve had it happen to me twice. The first one was 20-odd years ago when I nudged a car which stopped in front of me very suddenly in slow-moving traffic. We both stopped to check and agreed there was no damage. But later that night he came round with his dad, who said “I think you were mistaken – there was more damage than you first thought”. He then proceeded to show me a rusty crumpled boot floor. I said “How do you sleep at night? You know that wasn’t caused today”. The insurance company agreed and threw out his claim, saying it was “old damage”. I remember the guy: Mr Wilson – professional (but not very good) insurance fraudster and all round scumbag.
Another one occurred at a roundabout. It was two lanes wide on the entry, but the car to my right pulled across two lanes and scraped down my offside. We exchanged details, and when I got home I repaired all the “damage” on my car by rubbing my front wing with Brasso. A few weeks later I got a claim through for over £600. The insurance company threw that one out as well – it was HIS fault not mine.
More recently, one of my pupils was involved in an accident and she called me for advice. What had happened was that she was driving along at less than 30mph and a car pulled out in front of her, clipping her front offside wing and smashing her light. I asked her specifically if the impact was on the side of her car or the front, and she confirmed it was the side. I stressed that she must put in a claim immediately, because the other driver will do and it will be exaggerated.
It got complicated, because her dad didn’t want to alert the insurance company because “she was a new driver and they will put her premiums up, and they always decide against the new driver.” I told her this was all nonsense, but her dad was calling the shots.
I spoke with her again a few weeks later and she said “well, the other driver hasn’t done anything so I’m just hoping he will forget about it”.
I said “Lyn, what registration year was the other car?” She replied “2007”.
I said “Look, there is no way he is not going to put a claim in with a car that is still less than three years old. And it will be hugely exaggerated.”
I got a call a few days later. She said “The bastard has put a claim in and he is saying that he was stationary and I drove into HIM”.
The last I heard the insurance company was disputing his claim because “the damage didn’t match his story”.
However, a lot of these scumbags get away with it – especially when it involves personal injury, and doubly so if it involves children.
A couple of years ago I was rear-ended on a lesson by an old guy in a Mercedes (it wasn’t hard). I said to my pupil a few days later, after ascertaining he was OK: “If you get a call from a personal injury company, you ARE NOT injured! Are we clear about that?”
Ironically, the personal injury claims are often triggered by the insurance companies themselves.
An update came through on the newsfeed – Keisha Bianca Wall has been convicted of causing death by dangerous driving after reading a text she received while in her car.
An interesting side tale to this is that the original story says that her mother – a driving instructor – was also arrested and charged with dangerous driving, but the charge was later dropped. But what does it say now about here suitability to remain on the Register of Approved Driving Instructors?
By definition, her evidence is now questionable. At the very least she has concealed the true story by supporting her daughter’s version – which has now been shown to be fabrication.
It’s hard not to judge people when you hear stories like this.
Mind you. We haven’t heard the sentence yet. That’s due to be given on April 11th, and Wall is out on conditional bail.
In an update to the ongoing case, it is reported that:
A Jury will be asked to decide whether a young driver responded to a text message on her phone at the moment her car veered off the road and killed a 63-year-old woman.
The evidence given says that:
…Wall had been sent a text message – “If you can think of something to do, we will do it” – at 12.39.04pm.
The first 999 call to the ambulance service was timed at 12.40.06pm.
Mr Ward-Jackson said when the police seized Wall’s phone later it was clear the text had been read, but there was no way of knowing at what time that had happened.
British law is full of loopholes. Witnesses to the accident also gave evidence:
[witness Melanie Duggan] said: “She said something about a black car swerving. ‘Did you see the black car? It was driving in towards me’.”
She had also seen Wall using her mobile phone after the collision, she told the court.
Mrs Duggan’s sister Kay Grigg was a passenger in her BMW and she described what Wall said at the scene. She said: “She said numerous times ‘Did you see the black car, I need a witness. I swerved from the black car’.”
However, Wall’s evidence given in Court doesn’t mention the black car. The case continues.
And there is another story – this one from America – of an accident where texting has also been cited as the cause. Read some of the comments people have left against the story.
Don’t worry – it’s a story from Ottawa, Canada on CBC News.
It appears that Canada has the same problem we do here in the UK. Namely, inferior politicians trying to jump-start their careers.
In a nutshell, people who live near a test centre have complained, Councillor Maria McRae has listened, and she has tabled a motion to ban driver training near to the test centre in question. It could be taken straight off the noticeboard in any test centre in the UK, couldn’t it?
Mind you, another thing Canada shares with the UK is the attitude of many of its driving instructors.
Local driving instructors were sent a notice from the city to stop driving in the area last month — something they said is unfair.
“Other people practice with their kids without a roof sign,” Rite-Way Driving School instructor Jamal Kassabry said.
“How are they going to stop that, too?”
That one could come straight out of an ADI association’s meeting minutes, couldn’t it? We have them over here where if there is a request not to use a certain area or location posted at the test centre, some ADIs will go there deliberately. We don’t help ourselves, sometimes.
The best quote comes in the comments at the bottom (and there are 10 pages of them):
I live in this area, in fact I live on a street which I drove on during my G2/G driving tests taken at Walkley. There are, without-a-doubt, A LOT of driving schools practicing in the neighbourhood – while waiting on the street corner for the little one’s school bus I’ll quite often count as many 1 in 3 cars being driven by new drivers.
In spite of this, I wouldn’t by any means consider it a problem. Sure, there’s arguably more traffic than there should be, but these drivers drive extremely slow (at times half the speed limit) and are barely dangerous. The only traffic I ever see is caused by the dozens of parents dropping off and picking up kids from school. With all of the gang-filled-ghettos that border this neighbourhood, kids practicing their driving is the least of our worries.
That sums up the whole issue in one. When Councillor McRae refers to “residents’ complaints” she actually means “very few residents” or “not a high percentage of residents”.
I have to say, the combination of the typical intellect and attitude of a driving instructor and the career aspirations of a no-name local councillor is a potent one indeed. It seems to be the same the world over.
THIS IS AN OLD POST. THERE HAVE BEEN UPDATES TO THE PROCESS SINCE, ISSUED BY DVSA.
An email alert from the DSA:
Changes to the ADI registration reminder
DSA’s process to remind you to renew your approved driving instructor (ADI) registration is about to change.
From May 2011, DSA will still aim to send you a renewal reminder letter six months before your registration expiry date, but won’t send you another one three months later. This is so that you only receive essential communication from the agency.
Please remember, it’s your responsibility to make sure you renew in time, although DSA will always aim to send you the reminder.
You’ll also need to give yourself enough time to apply for your Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) disclosure. Your reminder letter will tell you how to do this.
If you’ve already received a six month reminder
If your six-month renewal reminder arrives before the beginning of May, you won’t be receiving another reminder three months later.
Manage your registration online
You can also manage your ADI registration and continuing professional development (CPD) through the Business Link website at businesslink.gov.uk/manageadi
It’s a perfect way to cut the administration burden and, therefore, unnecessary costs. Let’s see how the ADI community views it, though…
The Thurrock Gazette reports that a driving examiner and an instructor have been jailed for a bribes scam they were involved in.
It’s funny how you write (or say) something, and then you come across news stories on similar topics.
Over the years I have been driving, I’ve had it happen to me twice. The first one was 20-odd years ago when I nudged a car which stopped in front of me very suddenly in slow-moving traffic. We both stopped to check and agreed there was no damage. But later that night he came round with his dad, who said “I think you were mistaken – there was more damage than you first thought”. He then proceeded to show me a rusty crumpled boot floor. I said “How do you sleep at night? You know that wasn’t caused today”. The insurance company agreed and threw out his claim, saying it was “old damage”. I remember the guy: Mr Wilson – professional (but not very good) insurance fraudster and all round scumbag.