Vision. You MUST be able to read a vehicle number plate, in good daylight, from a distance of 20 metres (or 20.5 metres where the old style number plate is used).
If you need to wear glasses (or contact lenses) to do this, you MUST wear them at all times while driving.
The police have the power to require a driver to undertake an eyesight test.
Remember that anything in the HC which says “MUST ” in red is supported by Law. You’re breaking the Law if you ignore it.
Or to give it its full title: Roadcraft: The Police Driver’s Handbook.
Anyone who has a copy of this should occasionally turn around and make sure they haven’t let reality slip out of their sight.
Some elements of the book can be useful when teaching, but this is NOT the case most of the time, and definitely NOT for every pupil.
Roadcraft has been jumped on by the “I Am An Advanced Driver” brigade as some sort of bible.
I again refer to its official title as a Police Driver’s handbook. This is clearly written on the cover. Furthermore, the foreword is written by ACPO and the Police Foundation. I don’t really see what else is needed to convince ADIs that this is NOT a learner syllabus.
It was written for the police. Period.
Much of what it contains would be dangerous if an inexperienced person tried to use it. Inexperience means – by definition – that existing underlying skills are undeveloped, whereas Roadcraft assumes that its readers have these necessary skills. It cannot possibly make that assumption correctly of readers outside the realms of the police force.
OK, I suppose they’re not that rare – QCs who think they know it all, that is – but whenever they open their mouths you still have to wonder what planet they come from.
This letter in the Financial Times (you have to register, but it’s free) is from Julian Malins, QC (he’s signed it, so that’s why I’m mentioning him by name). It came through in the newsfeeds with the headline title “Driving test is too difficult so many do not bother at all”, so it naturally caught my attention.
It is all to do with a previous FT story about the declining numbers of young people taking the driving test, explained as being due to financial constraints and the like.
Our expert QC berates the FT for this. Apparently, it is obvious (to him, at any rate) that the only reason people don’t take the driving test as much is that it is too hard!
It would appear that his sole source of evidence is that the police once told him that as much as 10% of all drivers on the M25 at any time are unlicensed.
He should look outside of London, EC4 (he probably isn’t aware that people even live outside of EC4). In some places, notably in Yorkshire, as many as 90% of all drivers are uninsured or unlicensed in some areas, and I got that off the police in those cop shows on cable.
I’m not sure what our expert QC would suggest, though if you join the dots the obvious answer is that the test should be made easier or just abolished. Malins suggests that this is why magistrates courts are filled with these people.
You have to wonder how such naïveté could be found in someone who is actually capable of destroying someone’s life as a result of these totally inaccurate beliefs.
An email alert from the DSA advises that the scheduled examiner strike on February 15th has been suspended.
Fossil Command at PCS is no doubt trying to find a better and far more inconvenient time for the strike. Obviously, with the risk of snow cancelling tests at this time of year, PCS officials made a major mistake scheduling industrial action when there is a risk of their little performance clashing.
This is an old story. Note that they stopped doing tests at Clarendon Street in late 2014. Clifton is still used. Watnall is also now on the list – so you have Colwick, Watnall, Beeston, Clifton as valid choices for your test.
I mentioned this in passing a few weeks ago. While registering with the DSA’s new ADI portal I noticed that one of the available Nottingham test venues was listed as Trent University Clifton Campus. At that time there wasn’t any further information available (I suppose if there had, 90% of Nottingham’s ADIs would have been heading over to the Clifton site and causing traffic chaos, just like they did when the Chalfont Drive relocation was mooted).
But now it has been officially announced.
Driving tests are now going to be hosted from Clarendon Street in the City Centre and from the Clifton Campus.
It’s only a trial and tests will only go out two days a week. The trial is expected to last 3 to 6 months, and will commence from March, the report says.
Tests are not restricted to students – they’re a local facility.
I don’t have a problem with either venue and – on paper – this is a great idea. However, I wouldn’t expect the city centre location to end up being very popular with candidates, and with work now technically in progress for the widening of the A453 (and the traffic chaos that will ensue – even above and beyond to continuous chaos that exists due to the A453 not being wider already – I can see the Clifton location faring badly if circumstances on the A453 take a poor turn.
Readers will be aware that I ran a few articles on the Cassie’s Law E-Petition. The petition closed last November, and I honestly thought that it had failed to gain enough support to be debated in Parliament.
The reader who sent the link referred to MY campaign. I wish I could claim that honour, but all I did was report on it and push it as hard as I could. I was not involved with it beyond that, and did not liaise with Jackie McCord (Cassie’s mother) in any way at all. The story just touched me – as well as hitting a nerve! The only thing I do know is that the stories I posted got quite a few hits and I’d like to think that this led to the petition gaining some extra signatures.
Anyway, as the story reveals, Cassie’s Law is to become LAW.*
For those not aware of the story, Cassie McCord was 16 when she was hit by an 87-year old driver who mixed up his accelerator and brakes, flew on to a pavement, and crushed her against a wall. He had already been involved in an accident days earlier and had refused to surrender his licence. Police were powerless to do anything.
* the changes are not actually a change in the Law, but procedures have been put in place to get elderly and medically unfit drivers off the road quicker – something that would have saved Cassie’s life if it had been in place sooner.
Under an FOI request – the first one of the year, and filling column inches now that there’s no snow to talk about – The Sun has discovered that around 5 tests a day during 2011/12 involved someone cheating or trying to cheat on one of the driving tests – by getting someone to do it for them, attempting to bribe the examiner, or even threatening physical violence. The majority were impersonations, however.
I do like some of the comments at the bottom of the story. The average Sun reader seems to be under the impression that showing a photo at the time of taking the test would solve all these problems.
Actually, candidates already do that: there’s a picture on their driving licence. But one huge problem with this is that not many people look anything like their photos to start with – even while the photo is still damp out of the instant-snap machine in the Co-op (those damned things must have a setting inside called “criminal”, because everyone looks like they were waiting to be put in a police cell overnight in them). Some were maybe going through a goth phase, or had just come out of one when they had the photo taken (I get loads of them), and the absence or otherwise of face metalwork, or the kaleidoscope range of hair colours and styles really puts a cat among the pigeons. And what if little Jonny or Kylie suddenly had a growth spurt a few weeks after sending off for their provisional?
The reality is that much of this attempted fraud is among people from countries where bribery and corruption is official government policy, and where identification from the data transferred to the UK is unreliable at best (some people change their identity in their home country, then that new persona is the only one they’re known by when they arrive in the UK). In many cases, the citizens of some of these countries have photos where they have black hair and long beards (even if that has changed since they moved to the UK).
So, a grainy photo is NOT going to resolve anything when someone dishonest decides to capitalise on this confusion.
Sorry, “crazy woman from Manchester” (the weirdo who wrote to me a while back), but this is exactly why the impersonators get away with it:
THEY LOOK ENOUGH LIKE WHAT THE PERSON THEY’RE IMPERSONATING USED TO LOOK LIKE FOR THE EXAMINERS TO GO AHEAD WITH THE TEST.
They know this, and they utilise the fact in their fraudulent endeavours. They know that the examiner daren’t raise issues for fear of being labelled racist, because unfortunately there are enough “crazy woman of Manchester” types around for this accusation to be made at the drop of a hat.
Examiners often stand back and do a double-take when they look at photos of my pupils. Much of the time they also consider who has brought the candidate to test – is it an ADI they know, or is the candidate unaccompanied? But if examiners put a block on just because someone looked a bit different from their photo, about 95% of all tests would get cancelled.
Biometric ID is the only way – and some people would even find a way around that.
The fossils in the PCS union have got yet more strikes on the way – three in quick succession, this time (it’s like when children get more and more naughty until someone takes notice of them).
Planned dates are 1st and 15th of February and 1st March – all in the afternoon. This time, though, the first date covers England, Scotland, and Wales, the second date just England and Scotland, and the last date just Wales (I bet the flip charts were steaming when they worked that one out).
In the link above, the DSA is correctly advising candidates to attend tests as they normally would. That’s because not all examiners are stupid enough to be in the union in the first place, and of those who are not all are THAT stupid that they will get involved in strike action. I should also point out that the further north you travel within the UK, the more stupid people apparently get (based on the statistics for test cancellations the last few strikes).
UPDATE: The one on 1st February has been cancelled. No doubt so it can be rearranged for a more inconvenient time for candidates.
This is an old story. As of September 2014, tests are conducted at Colwick, Beeston (near the train station), Clifton (on the Trent University campus), and Watnall (the old LGV testing station).
Chalfont Drive stopped doing tests in 2013. Clarendon Street (the Trent University campus in the city centre) ceased conducting tests in late August 2014 a few weeks prior to Watnall commencing operations.
UPDATE: From 27 June 2013 tests will be conducted from the new Beeston Test Centre. This is the new and permanent location.
The story below is from the archives.
I can’t say I’m surprised. It was reported in November last year that Chalfont Drive Test Centre was closing and moving to Beeston from the start of February 2013. A move had been on the cards for several years.
I reported earlier this month how the manager at Chalfont Drive had had to request that ADIs keep away from the proposed new site, as these idiots had been gridlocking the place in their desire to conduct lessons less than half a mile from whichever test centre their pupils will be taking their tests at. This was apparently jeopardising the deal, for which planning permission was not yet granted.
This email alert from the DSA notes that the move is now postponed. The test centre has been given leave to remain at Chalfont Drive “throughout February”.
The second section of the email is interesting. It says:
Longer term plan
Our longer term plan is still to open a new centre in the Nottingham area. We’ll let you know as soon as we’re able to confirm the operational date and details of the new test centre.
Reading between the lines, the new test centre ISN’T going to be in Beeston. I wonder if those prats who kept going down there are pleased with themselves. Even if it wasn’t they who contributed to the proposed deal in Beeston falling through, their lessons down there were an absolute waste of their pupils’ time (based on their own reasons for going there in the first place).
If the DSA has any sense at all, they won’t announce where the test centre is going to be this time around. Just move it, then tell people where it is and let them whine about it afterwards.
When (and where) will the new centre open?
We don’t know. This time, the DSA probably won’t tell anyone until the deal is done. And who can blame them?
EDIT: See the two updates at the top of this archived story.
This came through on the newsfeeds. A complete twat in an Audi – what else – was pictured on the M4 in Wales driving at around 70mph with a foot of snow on his car, and only a narrow slot on the front window to see out of.
It compares well with what I saw today: a BMW with private plates (reg. no. P19 RMW) doing similar speeds with a geometrically perfect half of the rear window – the driver’s side – covered in at least 6 inches of snow. He must have thought it was brilliantly funny to be doing that. He shot off down the ring road, and I could tell he’d passed because of the huge pile of snow half way down which had blown off – creating a skid hazard for everyone else.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Audi drivers and people with private plates shouldn’t be allowed to breed.
That report above was a result of the prat with the Audi being posted all over the internet – and police are now investigating. God! They’re SO clever, these idiots.
Anyone who has a copy of this should occasionally turn around and make sure they haven’t let reality slip out of their sight.
A reader 
there’s no snow to talk about – The Sun has discovered that around 5 tests a day during 2011/12 involved someone cheating or trying to cheat on one of the driving tests – by getting someone to do it for them, attempting to bribe the examiner, or even threatening physical violence. The majority were impersonations, however.
It compares well with what I saw today: a BMW with private plates (reg. no. P19 RMW) doing similar speeds with a geometrically perfect half of the rear window – the driver’s side – covered in at least 6 inches of snow. He must have thought it was brilliantly funny to be doing that. He shot off down the ring road, and I could tell he’d passed because of the huge pile of snow half way down which had blown off – creating a skid hazard for everyone else.