Category - ADI

Before the schools finished for the year, I caught this on camera when I was on a lesson (19/07/2010). There’s some sort of private school just off Cranmer Street, and every day there are school buses parked right next to the chicane  on yellow lines (the chicane has “Give Way To Oncoming Vehicles” signs at both ends because it’s on a bend!)

This was the mummies and daddies at drop off time, early in the morning.

Mummies And Daddies At Play

On the left side, just on the bend and on yellow lines, mummy no.1 (reg. no. FD09 DYO ) was dropping off no.1 daughter without a care for anyone else trying to get through. In front of her, an Audi 4×4 (reg. no. DN59 YDG ) was doing similar. You’ll note how the Audi is effectively blocking the road completely on the left side.

Now look at mummy no.3 (reg. no. FD04 ZHA ) dropping off her little darling on the right hand side. She’s parked almost entirely on the pavement – causing a severe hazard to pedestrians (i.e. other peoples little darlings) – but sufficiently on the road, opposite the Audi, to cause a further narrowing.

This is outside a school, remember. Any normal person parking like that would have the book thrown at them if a mummy or daddy complained.

But the best part is the car behind mummy no.3. Mummy no.4’s Toyota ‘look-at-how-much-we-earn’ mobile (reg. no. L3 UOS ) is virtually parked inside the chicane area. I should also point out that the situation gets worse as more mummies and daddies turn up and find nowhere else illegal to park, so tail back further into the chicane.

During the day, the place is crawling with traffic wardens and police (there may be a private school nearby, but the surrounding area is pretty rough), and yet there’s not one to be seen when this happens each morning. Rather strange, isn’t it?

My evening pupil cancelled his lesson earlier today (stuck at work). Yesterday, another pupil had moved his evening lesson tomorrow into a cancellation slot I’d just acquired earlier in the day. So I sensed a free afternoon today when my two o’clock pupil jumped at the chance to move her lesson to 6pm tomorrow. I needed to go to the bank anyway.

I’d driven about a quarter of a mile when I heard a rumbling sound. It rapidly got louder – and I knew what it was. A puncture. This was at 2.05pm.

I’m in the AA, and there is no way I am getting my hands dirty and stripping my knuckles (as well as destroying my trousers and shirt) arseing about with that tiny socket wrench and scissor jack to get the wheel off. The guy on the phone said they’d have someone there before 3pm – well, that’s OK. I could still go to the bank then nip to Kwik Fit and get the tyre fixed.

I got an almost immediate text telling me the AA man was on his way. He arrived less than 10 minutes later – the wheel was replaced by 2.25pm. I nipped to the bank, then made off for Kwik Fit on Huntingdon Street.

I arrived at 3.05pm. It turned out that one of my other tyres was down to 3mm, so I ended up having to have two of them replaced. But Kwik Fit, too, gave good service, and it was all sorted by 3.50pm.

I wish all breakdowns went like this. No lost lessons, and fixed almost immediately.

Going to the Colwick MPTC today, I noticed another car clamped at the end of Private Road No. 5 (not a learner car).

The Test Centre managers are warning of the problem in their updated newsletter.

I picked a pupil up this afternoon. She ran through her cockpit drill, then we did the summary of the previous lesson. The ensuing minute or two went like this:

Me: OK, drive off when you’re ready.

[Readjusts seat]

Me: What’s the matter?

She: I feel like I’m too close.

Me: OK. When you’re ready, off we go.

[Sets gas, moves left foot a bit, looks all around, handbrake off… nothing happens]

Me: Hold on a moment. Have you forgotten anything?

[Starts to readjust seat again]

Me: No, it’s not your seat. Set the gas and find the bite.

[Sets gas, moves left foot a bit, looks all around…]

Me: Have you got the bite? Try again… go on, raise your toes until you feel it…

[Sets gas, raises foot a bit… raises it some more… then some more… then eventually all the way up… no movement of the car]

Me: Right, so what does that tell you?

[Looks all around her feet and the steering wheel… possibly considering readjusting the seat again]

She: Ummm…

Me: Look at the gear lever.

She: [screams] Oh, I feel so stupid. I was having a blonde moment.

[We’re still in neutral]

She’s actually a decent learner driver, but everyone has these aberrations occasionally. Except men.

They might see themselves as being perfect – passing the Part 3 apparently means you become faster than a speeding train, are able to stop a bullet with your testicles (or the female equivalent), are capable of leaping tall buildings in a single bound, and so on. But they aren’t.

Wysall Lane

Someone should perhaps explain that to the one I saw yesterday on Wysall Lane, in Bunny.

He’d stopped on this narrow country lane just on the brow of a slight hill, and just ahead of a right bend. About 5 metres behind him was a farm field gateway, which he could have used, and which mkost sensible people do. The road is national speed limit (NSL) and people in cars (especially 4x4s – it’s rural, after all) come flying round that corner. The road is barely wide enough for two vehicles unless they move very close to the grass verge (and slow down, which most don’t).

Quite honestly, he’d chosen a very dangerous place to stop and begin lecturing his pupil. Doing it on test would be an immediate fail.

EXCERPT FROM HIGHWAY CODE

242
You MUST NOT leave your vehicle or trailer in a dangerous position or where it causes any unnecessary obstruction of the road.

[Laws RTA 1988, sect 22 & CUR reg 103]

243
DO NOT stop or park:

• near a school entrance
• anywhere you would prevent access for Emergency Services
• at or near a bus or tram stop or taxi rank
• on the approach to a level crossing/tramway crossing
• opposite or within 10 metres (32 feet) of a junction, except in an authorised parking space
• near the brow of a hill or hump bridge
• opposite a traffic island or (if this would cause an obstruction) another parked vehicle
• where you would force other traffic to enter a tram lane
• where the kerb has been lowered to help wheelchair users and powered mobility vehicles
• in front of an entrance to a property
• on a bend
• where you would obstruct cyclists’ use of cycle facilities
  except when forced to do so by stationary traffic.

As the adverts often say – anyone can become a driving instructor. Unfortunately.

I saw someone posted this question on one of the forums:

If a pupil is on test and they are unable to exit a junction because the road is just too busy, and nobody lets them out, how long will the examiner allow them to stay there and will they intervene at some point…if so, how?

All the answers centre upon the premise that it really is impossible to get out, and that any attempt to go would be wrong.

They’re right, of course. If you can’t go, you can’t go. Simple as that. But the reality is that there is always a gap or someone prepared to give way in circumstances even remotely approaching the one described here.

On top of that, examiners are testing new drivers – not Lewis Hamilton – so they are likely to offer a little advice without it affecting the outcome of the test.

The instructor should make it clear to pupils going to test that they should not take risks if they are held up because, as I said above, if you can’t go, you can’t go. So don’t try.

EDIT 29/11/2010: As an update to this, I had a pupil fail her test a few weeks ago for pulling out of a junction when a car was coming. This is the junction in question.

This is on one of the Nottingham City Centre routes. The small slip road has two lanes at the give way line (red and yellow dots). You can just see from the picture that the slip road is at an angle and joins the main one-way road (A60) on a slight bend. This means that if you are in the lane marked by the red dot and steer too sharply in line with the kerb to the right, your vision of traffic coming from your left is impaired.

My pupil did exactly that, and pulled out when a car was coming. The examiner had to use the dual controls to stop her.

You’d think it was a clear-cut situtation. But my pupil has done nothing but go on about how she couldn’t have done anything else. I’m not making this up, but her argument is:

But if I couldn’t see, what choice did I have but to go? The examiner’s head was in the way. I didn’t want to get a fault for hesitating.

She will not accept that she was wrong, and is trying to find convoluted reasons to support her case.

My explanation to her is simple:

You can always see if you try hard enough. If you can’t see, you don’t go. It’s that simple. If the examiners head is in the way, ask him to move it. Just going when you can’t see is like playing Russian Roulette.

One lesson to be learned is that you don’t put yourself in that situation in the first place. Plan ahead.

And another one is that if it’s a choice between a minor hesitation fault and a serious collision situation, you take the safer option. You’ve got kids: are you going to put them at risk when you’re driving around with them screaming in the back?

Badger Stops Line Painting

I saw this story in the Salisbury Journal – a gang of chimps employed by the Hampshire Council were painting white lines on a road but when they came to a dead badger, instead of removing it they just stopped painting and started again on the other side.

As you might expect from a bunch of unionized and copiously bureaucratized council neanderthals, the story is far more complex than you might imagine, and it is perfectly sensible and right that the badger should be left where it is and the lines not painted – no matter how much extra it will cost to send the primates out again to finish the job.

Mel Kendal, Hampshire County Council executive member for the environment, said: “We would usually liaise with our colleagues at the district council, who dispose of animal carcasses on the highways, to ensure the badger was removed before the white line-painting crew did this stretch of road.

“This appears not to have happened in this case and the white line-painting crew did what they thought was best until arrangements could be made to dispose of the carcass.

“These arrangements have now been made and the gap in the white lines will be filled in, at no extra cost to the council tax-payer.”

Mmmm. I wonder how this will not cost the tax-payer? Any money the council wastes – sorry, spends – is covered by the tax-payer one way or another, so quite how they think they can gloss over that is anyone’s guess. Maybe having to send the crew out again (and closing the roads to do it) will come out of Mel Kendal’s wages?

I particularly like the part about how the “crew did what they thought was best”. Obviously, thinking isn’t the crew’s biggest strength, and it is clear that Hampshire County Council also think that, too (though they can’t say it, of course).

Clamped Learner Car

I posted a few weeks ago about the wheel clamping problem which has started near the Colwick Test Centre. The situation is quite confusing as far as motives and honesty go.

You see, City Estates wrote to the DSA to advise them that the “landlord” of the industrial park had introduced wheel clamping for “health & safety reasons”. When you then look up City Estates’ website, you realise that the “landlord” is… City Estates. They glibly refer to “parking laws” – which is gobbledegook, since this is a private estate with private and misleading rules of its own.

Anyway, the owner of the clamped car in the picture has contacted me. He says:

…The car you have the picture of was mine. It cost me £140.00 to get the F****** thing off…

…I was showing a client the test centre when I got clamped. I had even made sure that we arrived 10 mins after test time to give anyone doing bay park on test the time to leave the area. The van that was carrying the clamps was a builders van he even had ladders on the roof. When I first saw the van my first impression was he was fly-tipping. He told me that the owners of the industrial estate were employing the company. And that the clamping stopped at the target cafe. BUT I have noticed in the last few days that the clamping signs now extend further down the road.

The signs are black and white that I could produce on my computer.

Most are also above eye level or missing.

It’s worth pointing out that in the last couple of weeks I have seen overseas lorries parking overnight in many of the usual places (curtains drawn, etc.). Not a sign of a clamper.

And the “landlords” don’t seem too eager to do anything about the idiots who work down the far end near the gravel pit and go flying up and down that road at 70mph plus (two weeks ago, some dickheads in a grey uber-pratmobile – a Subaru or Mitsubishi – were using it as a drag strip and they were easily doing 90mph).

Is it double standards? Are they just targeting driving school cars? It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?