ADI - Diary Of An ADI

Using The Clutch And Brake

24/12/2014

Another update to an older post, which has seen an increased number of hits recently.

A while ago, I suddenly started getting hits from someone (the same person) searching using “will you fail if you use clutch brake”. I’m not quite sure what they were asking, so here’s a summary of how to control the car (assuming you know the basics, of course).

Imagine you’re approaching a t-junction to turn right. Imagine it is a slight downward slope. So, on your approach you will look at what is going on around you, assess it, decide what you’re going to do once to arrive, then do it. Basically, this will either be “go” or “don’t go”. I am guessing that the question people keep asking is based on the “don’t go” option, and they want to know how they should handle it.

So, you’ve arrived at the junction and had to stop. You’ve put the car into 1st gear, you’ve got the clutch down, and the footbrake on. The options you have are:

if you can see it is going to be clear to go after a couple of cars have passed, you don’t need to use the handbrake
if you’re going to wait for any significant length of time (e.g. if you can’t tell when it is going to be clear), use the handbrake and release the footbrake
when you see a gap coming, get ready
once it is clear, drive away normally

Now imagine the exact same situation, except that you are going up a slight incline. You get to the give way lines at the junction. Your options are now:

if you can see it will be clear to go after a few cars, you could use the upward gradient along with a little gas/bite to slow the car to a crawl, and time your arrival to meet the gap (you could do this in 2nd gear, though 1st gear is most likely the best option)
you could use the gradient to stop, and hold the car still using gas/bite, then just drive away from this position when the gap appears
you could stop, apply the handbrake, then find the gas/bite and take the handbrake off again to meet the gap when it comes
if you have to wait for any significant length of time, use the handbrake anyway

I think this is what the question is about: is it OK to hold the car on gas/bite (i.e. to “ride the clutch”). The answer is yes – as long as it isn’t to excess and you’re in control . The driving examiner will look at how you use the clutch in these situations.

When you are out on the road, look at how many cars rock back and forth at traffic lights (so not good at holding it on the bite). Look at how many people sit with the brake lights on (so probably not using the handbrake at all). Look how many people roll back when they move off (so not good at finding the bite).

Riding the clutch properly takes practice if you want to avoid it going wrong, and not many people are as good as they think they are at controlling the car this way, which is why you see these things when you are out there. The drivers involved are often just lazy, and if you do it like that on your test then you are asking for trouble. Be careful, and don’t be afraid of the handbrake (although try to avoid using it for every little pause).

It’s worth pointing out that holding the car at the bite point too much wears down the clutch plates. A new clutch plate should last for 60-100,000 miles or more. If you ride it a lot – and badly – it can fail in less than 20,000 miles. And since they cost several hundred pounds to replace (my old Citroen Xantia cost me £395 + VAT when I had it done about 12 years ago, and one of my ex-pupils recently told me he’d been quoted not much less than £1,000 for his Mondeo), it isn’t something you want to be having replaced regularly.

It isn’t written anywhere that you must be able to ride the clutch like an expert. The examiner doesn’t automatically expect you to drive like one, although if you do then he cannot fail to be impressed – which might work in your favour if you make a small mistake somewhere else. However, if you come to a set of lights (or a crossing) which have just changed to red and you make no attempt to use the handbrake, and you do it regularly or get into a mess because of it, you’re chasing down a fault.

One last thing: personally, I don’t like my pupils finding the bite when they have the footbrake on, so I don’t teach them to do it and I stop them doing it if they develop the habit while they’re with me (it can develop by itself when a pupil isn’t sure how to coordinate their feet). The reason is that without gas the risk of stalling – which is already quite high in a learner – is that much greater. But if I get someone who can already drive, I don’t try to stop them finding the bite with the footbrake on unless it causes them to stall, causes delays in moving away, or results in jerky control (which is very often does). The examiners will view it that way, too, and you won’t fail for it unless it leads to other problems.

Do you use the clutch to brake?

NO! You use the brake to brake – the clue is in the name. You only put the clutch down if:

you’re changing gear
you’re stopping
you’re going slowly and you are deliberately coasting to control the car

If you immediately put the clutch down when you want to slow down from normal speeds, the car will not decelerate at all except due to gravity. If you’re going down a hill or around a corner gravity or centrifugal force will actually make it speed up. It’s called “coasting”, and the lack of engine braking is one big reason why you shouldn’t coast around most corners or for extended distances.

If you want to slow down, the first thing you should do is take your foot off the gas. The engine will slow down, and if the clutch is up it will cause the wheels (and therefore the car) to slow down. This is what is known as “engine braking”. You lose all that if you put the clutch down and break the connection between the engine and wheels.

But should you never coast?

As I said above, you can coast at low speeds if you need to control the car (e.g. in slow-moving traffic) – after all, it would be stupid if you were travelling at 5mph (the slowest many cars will go with no gas and the clutch up) when everyone around you was travelling at 2mph. You coast a little every time you change gear or come to a halt. And some corners – very sharp ones, for example – lend themselves to coasting (partially, at least) because you have to go very slowly. Just make sure you regain full control by finding the bite as soon as it is safe to do so.

If you’ve had someone teach you to change down through the gears (“sequential changing”) instead of just slowing down and going into the one you need, you should not put the clutch down and keep it down while you change through all the gears. The whole point of sequential changing is that you bring the clutch up after each gear change to utilise engine braking.

So are you saying it’s OK to coast?

People have a major hang-up over the issue of coasting, and even most instructors (and driving books) just think of it as riding along at speed in neutral, or free-wheeling around corners with the clutch down. Both of those things are bad, and they’re what gives coasting a deserved bad name.

However, coasting is a description of something, not a chronic illness. As soon as you pull over and stop the car, you have to coast a little. When you change gear, you coast a little. When you stop at traffic lights, you coast a little. And when you are moving very slowly, there comes a point where you have to coast, otherwise you could end up driving into the back of someone or something.

So, when you do a turn in the road, if you don’t coast at least a little, you’re likely to end up on the pavement or ramming hard into the kerb. At very low speeds in heavy traffic, coasting – in the sense of describing the control technique used – is a useful and essential tool. But this does not mean you should fling the car around corners on two wheels with the clutch down or listen to your taxi driver when he tells you coasting down hills in neutral saves on fuel. Coasting like that is dangerous.

Doing As You’re Told

24/12/2014

DOAADI

ADI, Training

A reader sent me this link a while back, and I forgot to mention it. It’s a little bit of satire which – like most satire – has more than a grain of truth attached to it.

The best thing is for you to read it for yourselves. But in a nutshell, the point it is making can be summed up as follows.

John Man is a young violinist who has been struggling for years to overcome his limitations as a musician…

“I tried just playing the way I want over and over and over again, hoping that it would get better,” he said. “It never did! It was like, the more I played it the same way the more it would sound the same. What could I do?”

Finally, out of sheer desperation, Man started doing what his teacher had been telling him to do in every lesson for the past five years. “The results have been incredible!” said Man. “It’s as if following the advice of an older, more experienced musician allows me to somehow cultivate effective working habits better than my own.”

It illustrates clearly the confusion over what “coaching” actually means among many driving instructors. Many would argue that Man’s original approach – to do it his way, and to ignore the advice of those who know better – was how coaching should be (this is how many of those who post on forums see it). In fact, his teacher was the coach, and when he started doing what he was told he managed to start improving beyond what he’d been taught. That’s real coaching.

A Nice Touch From The Examiners

22/12/2014

DOAADI

ADI, Driving Tests, DVSA

At the Beeston test centre today, all the examiners came out wearing identical reindeer sweaters. I thought that was a really nice touch. They’re all really nice people up there, and a real credit to the DVSA.

Unfortunately, my pupil failed, bringing my recent run of six passes on the trot to an end. Just one more test to go before Christmas.

As Ready As (N)Ever

19/12/2014

DOAADI

ADI, Training

I recently wrote about a pupil of mine who passed her test in spite of serious misgivings I had concerning her ability to perform under pressure. It turns out that I was wrong – and I’m more than prepared to admit that.

Normally, I don’t have an issue with my pupils being test ready. It’s quite simple: if they’re ready, they’re ready. I know when that is. End of. However, maybe a handful of pupils in a hundred turn out to be real wild cards, and even though they can do everything required of them some of the time on their lessons, they can’t do it all of the time. The $64,000 question is: does that mean they’re not test ready?

A lot of instructors become far too involved, and the point at which their responsibilities end and the pupil’s begin becomes blurred.

I noticed on a forum recently that someone posted how they’d taken a pupil to test who had previously failed with 3 driver faults and one serious fault. The pupil only took a single lesson due to financial constraints between that test and the next. Apparently, the pupil drove well on that lesson, and on the journey to the test centre. But the ADI concludes that the subsequent fail with 8 driver faults and 3 serious faults meant that the pupil wasn’t ready for the test. I can only go on what is written, but that is absolute nonsense. If they could drive well, they were test ready, and the fail was for other reasons.

There are more factors involved than people seem to realise. To start with, most pupils are far more nervous on their second attempt than on their first (not my fault, I can assure you). Secondly, whenever I’ve sat in, I’m sometimes slightly surprised at what some examiners let go just as I am slightly surprised at what others mark as faults. One pupil of mine recently bay parked with more than three quarters of his wheel in the neighbouring bay, but the examiner said he was “on the line” and let it go. I know that virtually every other examiner would have marked it as a fail (I certainly teach them that any part of the car in the neighbouring bay is chasing down a fail). This sort of thing isn’t common – and I have no issue whatsoever with any of my examiners up this way – but it does illustrate the natural variation in standards adopted by different examiners. So what might be seen as a “good” fail with only a couple of faults by an ADI might not be as good as he or she believes had it been marked slightly more harshly.

Then there is the simple issue of time, and its effect on things. One test might be in light traffic and good weather, whereas the next could be in horrendous conditions – God help a pupil on test who drives within half a mile of a school during the mummy run. In one test, the pupil might be emotionally balanced, and yet come the next attempt they might have family or personal issues on their minds. I remember at least two of my pupils over the years who had been openly threatened with losing their jobs if they didn’t pass, and another whose new “dream job” as an apprentice was conditional upon him passing.

And let’s not forget the Hand of Fate, where the jackass who wasn’t there last time decides to approach a junction at warp speed, to pull out, or to attempt to give priority where he shouldn’t, causing a chain of events that result in the pupil messing up under the pressure. One of mine once failed because she braked hard on a mini roundabout when a taxi cut her up, and then got stuck as every twat to her right started piling out over the roundabout regardless (that could happen to anyone, especially if the car has driving school livery on it). The list could go on indefinitely.

There is no way we can teach pupils for every eventuality. Sure, we can teach them how to deal with someone cutting in because it happens often. But we can’t teach them how to handle an armed police raid on a drugs den (it happened to one of mine on her test a few years ago). We can teach them how to deal with an ambulance coming up behind with its lights and siren going. But we can’t always teach them how to handle four unmarked police cars attempting to break the sound barrier, a 24 hour bus lane, and a dickhead behind who didn’t move over after we did, and then pulled up almost alongside us so that the police cars were held up, thus creating a situation that could only result in panic for a new and inexperienced driver (it happened on a lesson I was conducting two days ago). We can tell them to stay calm until the cows come home, but we can’t stop them being nervous to the point of vomiting if that’s part of their biology (I taught a brother, two sisters, and a cousin where ADHD, suspected Autism, and related traits were clearly inherited all the way down the line on the maternal side; and another where Autism in the son is clearly linked somehow with the diagnosed anxiety issues among the mother and all of her immediate family). And we can teach them how to anticipate what others will do until we’re blue in the face, but if they brake sharply on test because the clown in front decides to turn left or right without indicating and they didn’t realise what he was up to, they’re probably going to fail – even though anyone else, including the examiner, might also have done the same.

I’ve said it before, but the driving test is only the beginning of a lifelong learning curve. The test does not yield perfect drivers – and it has never pretended to do so. ADIs need to start remembering this instead of trying to conduct mock tests in their hi-vis jackets and expecting zero faults all the time.

DVSA: CGI HPT Clips Due To Start Early 2015

18/12/2014

DOAADI

ADI, DVSA

An email alert from DVSA says that CGI clips are due to replace the current video clips from early in the new year.

The quality of the clips is stunning – I’d challenge anyone to be able to identify them as CGI while watching them. However, it will be interesting to see how quickly the usual crowd of anti-DVSA Luddites find fault. I predict that someone somewhere will post the usual asinine comment about HPT being “a computer game” before the week is out.

I hope that these clips – or similar clips, at any rate – make their way across to Driving Test Success.

Test Pass: 12/12/2014

13/12/2014

DOAADI

ADI, Driving Tests

Well done Eileen, who passed today first time with just 3 driver faults. This is a classic example of why you should never write someone off – and how wrong you can be if you do.

Eileen is very nervous, and following my suggestion some months ago has been using beta-blockers on her lessons (after a visit to her GP). They have had a positive effect, but there is no “magic pill” that can turn someone into a brilliant driver. And certainly not overnight.

I had stopped her from taking a previously booked test because I thought she was dangerous. But I have to be honest in that I also wanted her to cancel this one on her last normal lesson because I was really worried about her nerves and how she would react on the driving test. I insisted that I sit in the back in case the test was abandoned – I honestly thought that it was a possibility – and I had advised her to be prepared for the possibility of things going wrong. She knew this, of course. That’s why she had gone to her GP in the first place, and she told me that the nerves came and went unpredictably in other aspects of her life.

It was one of the best drives I have ever seen anyone produce, on test or off it. When the examiner told her she’d passed – and I knew she had from what I’d seen even before he announced it – I had tears in my eyes. The three faults were all for the same thing, and they came early on, but she got into the swing and didn’t make the same mistake again.

So it just goes to show how wrong you can be. Anyone on the outside looking in would have probably said she wasn’t ready. Indeed, I saw a forum thread recently with precisely that topic, where people were lambasting someone who had taken a candidate to test who he said wasn’t up to standard. To be fair, that instructor hadn’t done himself any favours in how he put the story across, but it did illustrate clearly how the only person who knows the candidate is the instructor who taught them – and the information probably ought not to be passed to others for their opinions. Outsiders can usually only advise based on grudges and sections from the Great Big Handbook Of Finding Fault With Others.

I was completely wrong about Eileen. I’m happy to admit it. And I’ve learnt something: don’t be too hasty consigning pupils to the metaphorical scrapheap.

Hopefully, this tale will help others learn, too, before they start shooting their mouths off.

And Eileen’s pass brings my tally to five out of five for the week.

Autoglass Redundancies

11/12/2014

DOAADI

ADI, General, News

The story below is from 2011. In 2014 it attracted quite few hits on the blog.

In actual fact, apart from the original announcement, there appears to have been no further press information on this subject. Indeed, Autoglass’s own website doesn’t even mention the original press release – it seems to have been removed, and history altered.

If anyone from Autoglass has any information, please let me know.

Autoglass has just announced (June 2011) it is getting rid of 400 jobs.

I must confess to being sceptical about the reasons given by the owners. Apparently, it is because people are driving more carefully due to the rising price of fuel!!!

Hard to prove… but just as hard to disprove, I guess. But one thing I do know: it doesn’t tie in with what I’m seeing. In any case, it’s bit of a wishy-washy reason for something that could destroy someone’s life.

(This story has been edited due to an inaccuracy on my part in the original)

EDIT 17/6/2011: I’ve also found ~~this link~~ to Sky News covering the story. It doesn’t make the logic being used to justify the redundancies any more, er, logical.

Autoglass has a staff of around 3,000 according to that article, so 400 losses is well over 10% of the workforce.

In a statement, the firm said: “As a result of the exceptionally mild winter combined with the increased cost of fuel, which has caused a reduction in the number of miles driven, there has been less vehicle damage and the industry, as a whole, has seen lower demand this year.

Can someone just remind me what last winter was like? I can’t remember. Or rather, I seem to remember quite a different winter to the one they’re talking about here. It was officially the second coldest winter since 1985/86 in the UK as a whole, the second coldest in Scotland since 1978/79, and seventh equal coldest since records began in Northern Ireland, and the second coldest since 1995/96 in England and Wales. You can read all the other stats over at the Met Office website, but calling last winter “exceptionally mild” is laughable – particularly as a reason for putting 400 people out of work.

I wonder what Autoglass management will do when the weather gets cold again and people start driving faster once more? Sack even more people?

No More Manoeuvres On Driving Tests?

29/11/2014

DOAADI

ADI, DVSA, News

This is an old post – so old information

This BBC article outlines proposed changes to the driving test. It is suggested that the turn in the road and corner reverse exercises could be dropped in favour of using a satnav to get to a destination and reversing out of a parking bay. The proposals are supposed to reflect “real life” driving.

In my opinion, removing these manoeuvres would be a big, big mistake. It was bad enough when they dropped having to do two manoeuvres so they could fit independent driving in, but cutting these other two completely would be stupid. For a start, both of them DO reflect real life driving and not knowing how to do them will just encourage bad alternative methods of dealing with having gone the wrong way. It’s already bad enough with boy racers flinging their cars into U-turns without checking behind in places where they can’t get round without smacking the kerb. This would just force them into that corner even further.

What makes me laugh is that the DIA “welcomed” the plans. Well, I suppose it would do, since it was apparently involved in the discussions in the first place, and some of this crap is no doubt its idea. It’s a bit like asking David Cameron to give an objective comparison of his own party against the others.

On that subject, there is a General Election coming up (remember taking learners on motorways?), and these sorts of ideas traditionally appear round about this far ahead of the polls, only to disappear without trace once the new government is installed. And if we’re not careful we could end up with one which is so far to the right it would need Stephen Hawking to explain curved space using Imperial measurements in the rosy glow of all the bonfires made out of burning immigrants up and down the country. There won’t be any time for altering the driving test amidst all that.

I agree with the RAC, in that knowing how to use the satnav is important in its own right. But being able to turn around if you go the wrong way is still a vital skill. DVSA should be looking at making the test longer so they can test for more skills. They need to stop just trying to cram things into 40 minutes.

Note that parallel park and bay park would still be included under the proposals. Note also that these changes are not going to happen anytime soon.

You Have To Wonder At People Sometimes

28/11/2014

DOAADI

ADI

I was driving on an unlit country lane tonight at just before 4.30pm. It was getting dark, and it was drizzly and misty. I almost shit myself as I suddenly noticed a dog walker standing in the shadow of trees on my left, against a backdrop of trees. The dog walker was on the road on my left – not on the path that exists under the trees – and the dog was a bloody Black Labrador. It was sniffing in the long grass so I couldn’t see its eyes, and the owner was wearing black trousers and a deep red/wine coloured coat.

I can just imagine whose fault THAT would have been if I’d hit them!

Hazard Perception Test Wins Safety Award

15/10/2014

DOAADI

ADI, DVSA, News, Training, Transport

This article was written in June, and the “vipers’ comments” I referred to relate to those I read on various forums at that time. However, I notice the subject has cropped up again recently.

This came in via the DVSA email alerts, and it reports that the Hazard Perception Test (HPT) has won the John Smart Road Safety award at this years’ Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation (CIHT) awards. As you can imagine, this has caused a few of the usual vipers out there to burst out of their holes and start flinging their favoured lines around.

The award was primarily for the study and the effort that went into it – not for the simple process of sitting in front of a computer screen for 90 minutes in order to complete the Theory Test.

For anyone who is interested, a “cohort study” is a complex analytical method used in situations where things aren’t just black or white. For example, the human body is extremely complex, and so are most drugs, and a particular drug might not affect everyone in the same way, or it might have unwanted side effects which only show up in some people. It isn’t simply a case of being able to say “well, he took the drug and it didn’t affect him, therefore the problem isn’t with the drug”. A cohort study can help pin down the cause by looking at groups of people and data which apply to them. Unfortunately, such studies involve statistics, and most ADIs are self-proclaimed anti-experts on this subject – often summed up on web forums when someone posts their favourite mantra that there are “lies, damned lies, and statistics”.

And they wonder why no one – including the DVSA – wants to listen to them!

Learning to drive – and driving safely thereafter – is also a hugely complex issue. It simply cannot be broken down into something as simple as what, for example, happens when you mix two different colours of paint! For that reason, two cohort studies have been carried out – Cohort I covered the period 1988-1998, and Cohort II covered the period 1998-2007. The second study straddled the introduction of the HPT in 2002.

You can read the full findings for yourselves, but key points were:

The average amount [of lessons with an ADI] was 52 hours, but half of the candidates had less than 40 hours of professional instruction. In Cohort I, the average was 31 hours.
The total driving experience for [test] passers averaged 67 hours [in Cohort II), compared with 49 hours in Cohort I.
In the first six months after the practical test, nearly two in ten respondents (19%) reported having an accident and seven in ten respondents (70%) reported having a near accident. As new drivers gained experience, the number of accidents they reported decreased and the severity of accidents increased.
The introduction of the hazard perception test was associated with some reduction in subsequent accident liability in the first year of driving, depending on the type of accident. For reported nonlow-speed accidents on a public road where the driver accepted some blame, the accident liability of those who had taken the hazard perception test was significantly lower than those who had not.
The higher the score achieved in the hazard perception test, the lower the accident liability for some types of accidents in the first year of driving.

If you read the bulk of the report, it is explained that following the introduction of HPT, more time was spent by candidates studying for the Theory Test (TT), and there was an increased use of visual materials. This detail alone is completely overlooked by the aforementioned naysayers, and yet it clearly implies that the HPT has made candidates think more about what they are doing. The report then adds:

Multivariate analysis showed that the introduction of the hazard perception test was associated with a reduction in subsequent accident liability for some types of accident in the first year of driving. The size of the effect varies with the type of accident.

The naysayers will be totally lost with this statement, but what it is saying is that there was a distinct statistical reduction in some types of accident following introduction of the HPT. It goes on to explain:

For reported non-low-speed accidents on a public road where the driver accepted some blame, accident liability for the first year of
those who had taken the hazard perception test was significantly lower than that of those who had not. There is also a predictive relation between the hazard perception score and levels of reported accidents in the first year, suggesting that there is scope for reducing accidents by improving hazard perception skills.

When something is “significantly” lower you cannot simply discount it just because you don’t understand it, or because you have some existing prejudice to defend. In conclusion, the report states:

Cohort II also provides the first persuasive evidence of a safety benefit associated with the introduction of hazard perception testing in the driver testing regime. The results suggest that the better people are at identifying hazards in the test, the better they are at avoiding accidents in future.

With that, it is simply stating fact – the evidence is right there – yet it doesn’t make any direct claims because, as already mentioned, the topic is far too complex for that.

I have said before that even in the worst possible case, the HPT would have had a neutral effect, However, it is hard to imagine that it would have had no effect at all – the fact that prior to it, there was nothing except what a pupil learned on lessons, whereas now there is the lessons AND the HPT. Certainly the HPT will not have had a negative effect, or increased accident rates, although I remember some idiot trying to claim this a couple of years ago.

I don’t believe for a second that every positive thing is down to the introduction of HPT. Every pupil is different, and pupils as a whole in 2014 are different to those in 1998, and those in turn were different to those from 1988. However, you’d have to be a completely biased moron to try and dismiss the results as providing no support whatsoever for HPT.

HPT is better than nothing. And the results from Cohort II clearly support this.

Category - ADI