Highly appropriate advice from the DSA, this time about using mobile devices and in-car technology whilst moving:
Rule 149
You MUST exercise proper control of your vehicle at all times. You MUST NOT use a hand-held mobile phone, or similar device, when driving or when supervising a learner driver, except to call 999 or 112 in a genuine emergency when it is unsafe or impractical to stop. Never use a hand-held microphone when driving. Using hands-free equipment is also likely to distract your attention from the road. It is far safer not to use any telephone while you are driving or riding – find a safe place to stop first or use the voice mail facility and listen to messages later.
Rule 150
There is a danger of driver distraction being caused by in-vehicle systems such as satellite navigation systems, congestion warning systems, PCs, multi-media, etc. You MUST exercise proper control of your vehicle at all times. Do not rely on driver assistance systems such as cruise control or lane departure warnings. They are available to assist but you should not reduce your concentration levels. Do not be distracted by maps or screen-based information (such as navigation or vehicle management systems) while driving or riding. If necessary find a safe place to stop.
Remember that MUST and MUST NOT mean you are breaking the Law if you do the opposite. That’s something the woman driving the blue Skoda Fabia (reg. no. S13 XYK ) in West Bridgford the other day ought to bear in mind. She was clearly using her mobile to text whilst waiting at traffic lights and – unbelievably – as she drove off through them and turned left on to Trevor Road towards West Bridgford town centre.
Another useful reminder from the DSA, this time about vehicle maintenance.
Tyres MUST be correctly inflated to the vehicle manufacturer’s specification for the load being carried. Always refer to the vehicle’s handbook or data. Tyres should also be free from certain cuts and other defects.
Tread depth
Cars, light vans and light trailers MUST have a tread depth of at least 1.6 mm across the central three-quarters of the breadth of the tread and around the entire circumference.
Motorcycles, large vehicles and passenger-carrying vehicles MUST have a tread depth of at least 1 mm across three-quarters of the breadth of the tread and in a continuous band around the entire circumference.
Mopeds should have visible tread.
Burst tyre
If a tyre bursts while you are driving, try to keep control of your vehicle. Grip the steering wheel firmly and allow the vehicle to roll to a stop at the side of the road.
Flat tyre
If you have a flat tyre, stop as soon as it is safe to do so. Only change the tyre if you can do so without putting yourself or others at risk – otherwise call a breakdown service.
Tyre pressures
Check weekly. Do this before your journey, when tyres are cold. Warm or hot tyres may give a misleading reading.
Your brakes and steering will be adversely affected by under-inflated or over-inflated tyres. Excessive or uneven tyre wear may be caused by faults in the braking or suspension systems, or wheels which are out of alignment. Have these faults corrected as soon as possible.
Remember that when it says MUST it means that it is against the Law if you don’t.
A recent reminder from the DSA about how to handle lanes and line markings:
Rule 128
Double white lines where the line nearest to you is broken. This means you may cross the lines to overtake if it is safe, provided you can complete the manoeuvre before reaching a solid white line on your side. White direction arrows on the road indicate that you need to get back onto your side of the road.
Rule 129
Double white lines where the line nearest you is solid. This means you MUST NOT cross or straddle it unless it is safe and you need to enter adjoining premises or a side road. You may cross the line if necessary, provided the road is clear, to pass a stationary vehicle, or overtake a pedal cycle, horse or road maintenance vehicle, if they are travelling at 10 mph (16 km/h) or less.
Lane discipline is something many pupils struggle with – and the evidence is that many of them continue to struggle with it when they have passed.
This is an old post. Some of the examples are out of date, but the message is still the same.
When I was in the rat race, the “good news/bad news sandwich” (GNBN) was much touted. One of the things I learnt about it was that it is only something you were expected to give to other people. No one ever seems to give it to you… or do they?
The GNBN technique is how you’re supposed to impart bad or negative news to someone by starting off with some good stuff, then cover the bad news, then round it off with more good stuff. It’s a pathetic and childish attempt to disguise the bad news, that’s all. And it’s made worse by the ineptness of those trying to do it.
There are a number of problems with the technique. The main one is that most people can see right through it. I said that no one seems to use it on you, but that’s only because it doesn’t work if you have a mind of your own. If you’re being chewed out, you’re being chewed out, and no amount of waffle about inconsequential “good things” can hide that.
You see, the bad news portion is usually hugely significant in terms of the collection of events that make someone’s life go round, whereas the good news parts are ridiculously insignificant when measured on the same scale. A good example would be the results of an interview for a new job within your company. GNBN might deal with it using the following elements:
you gave a really good interview and we were impressed
you didn’t get the job
you have a future with us and shouldn’t be discouraged
If you’re naïve enough to be mollified, even for a short time, the simple fact is you didn’t get the job that you had your heart set on. Your career (and your bank balance) really needed it, but now you’re consigned to at least another year in the same position, with the extra humiliation of knowing you’re not good enough. This will probably be even worse when you find out who did get it (and how bad they are), and you start to realise the extreme social awkwardness that this will create – the new job holder will most likely be gloating or patronising now that they’re senior to you, even without trying.
Do you really feel better about all that because you gave a “good interview”? Have you considered the multiple meanings “a future with us” carries (i.e. you can stay where you are, but you’re likely to get the same result in future because someone senior doesn’t like you)?
GNBN will really have helped you, won’t it?
GNBN is one of those things that is sound as a general principle, but which has been grabbed by successive crops of wishy-washy coachinistas (new word) as being The Answer To Everything. A huge problem with it is that it doesn’t work when the relative magnitude of the bad news is huge compared with the good news parts, or if the bad news and good news are poles apart in terms of relevance and importance.
I remember a while back having a school teacher as a pupil. On one occasion our discussion went like this after we’d pulled over to deal with a mistake she’d made:
“Aren’t you supposed to wrap the bad news with good news?”
“OK. I like what you’ve done with your hair, and those are nice shoes you’re wearing. But I’m more concerned about how you just drove over the edge of that roundabout, swung out to take the wrong exit without looking because you accelerated, and forced all those other cars to slam on their brakes. You ought to be, too.”
“All right, I take your point. I was only joking though”.
And this illustrates the point about magnitudes, relevance, and importance. Even if I’d sandwiched her mistake with how well she’d riven down a quiet road earlier, and how competently she’d dealt with the traffic lights and crossings in the shopping precinct (which I’d have already commented on separately, anyway), these two things were hugely insignificant and irrelevant in terms of what had just gone wrong. The possible consequences both now and if she did it in future when out on her own (not to mention what would happen if she did it on test) were massively more significant.
Bill Gates, in his book Business At The Speed Of Thought, makes it clear how he feels about bad news…
An essential quality of a good manager is a determination to deal with any kind of bad news head on, to seek it out rather than deny it. An effective manager wants to hear about what’s going wrong before he or she hears about what’s going right…
You focus on bad news in order to get cracking on the solution.
He says a lot more, but you get the point. And he’s absolutely right. Many ADIs – who already believe we should be teaching yoga, Buddhism, aromatherapy, and all kinds of other crap – would do well to get a grip and start dealing with things properly. Learners will learn a lot more if we teach them to accept they made a mistake, live with it, and to fix it for next time than they will from all the politically correct New Age claptrap some think we should be peddling.
Think about that: why should trying to teach people to acknowledge their faults and strive to eliminate them be less desirable than pandering to their insecurities and trying to make them look good when they just tried to kill you and themselves in a 1 tonne lump of machinery?
Over the years, of the 99.9% of pupils I’ve taken to test who have been 100% ready (yes, I admit that I have taken a small few who weren’t), on the occasions when they have failed I have often said something like “well, you only got three faults, so you’ve got to look at it positively”. I forget the number of times they have replied:
“But I still failed, didn’t I?”
They’re not as stupid as the current crop of New Age driving instructors think they are.
GNBN has a place… sometimes. If someone has negotiated six crossings perfectly, misses a pedestrian about to walk on to the seventh, and then does the next few properly until you can pull them over, a GNBN sandwich is easily applied – and quite rightly so. But if they pulled away from their house perfectly, tried to drive across a busy junction without checking (and with cars coming both ways) because they didn’t even see it, and then dealt with an empty crossing satisfactorily, trying to contrive a GNBN routine out of it is a waste of their time and money.
I noticed an amusing discussion on a web forum about whether or not to push the button in on the handbrake when applying it. So here are some sensible answers to those questions.
Will I fail my test if I push the button in when I put the handbrake on?
No. The examiner doesn’t mark it.
Will I fail my test if I don’t push the button in when I put the handbrake on?
No. The examiner doesn’t mark it.
What does it mean when someone says to let the handbrake “ratchet”?
It means that you don’t push the button when you pull the lever and allow it to make that familiar clicking sound.
A ratchet is a mechanical device which only allows movement in one direction. The pawl is the component that holds the ratchet in place. When you push the button in on your handbrake, you lift the pawl so that the ratchet can move freely. A racheting sound is the sound of a ratchet in operation as the pawl moves over each tooth, and it describes that click-click-click you hear. People often refer to this as “letting it ratchet”.
Why was I taught to push the button in when I learnt to drive 30 years ago?
A lot of things change with time. My dad used to fix cars, and I remember once seeing a broken ratchet that had been removed back in the days when you could do that sort of work yourself. It was made out of what looked like die-cast metal and some of the teeth were missing. Therefore, the argument in favour of pushing the button in when applying the handbrake cited wear-and-tear as the reason for not letting it ratchet. Nowadays car parts such as this are built out of hard-wearing synthetic materials and are designed better. Wear-and-tear and poor performance are not really big issues any more.
My car handbook says that I must not push the button in
There have been numerous cases over the years where car handbrakes have spontaneously “released” and let people’s cars roll away out of driveways or down hills. Indeed, my own car will sometimes make a loud “ping” as the brake drops a notch when you let it go. The problem has been so bad in some cases that various makes and models have been subject to recall notices to have new mechanisms fitted. As recently as 2013 Corsa D models were involved in such a recall.
What I believe happens in non-recall cases is that by pushing the button in as you apply the brake, it is possible to let the pawl come to rest ON TOP of a ratchet tooth instead of between two teeth. The increased cable tension (or less stretchy cable) in modern designs allows it to stay there, but as the temperature drops at night the pawl can suddenly pop down on to the next ratchet position. This is why the vehicle handbooks are now worded as they are, and allowing the handbrake to ratchet means that it always settles right between two ratchet teeth.
I was taught in a Vauxhall Chevette, and to push the button in when applying the brake. Old habits die hard, and I still use the button about half of the time. But even pupils who have never been in a car before tend to want to push the button when they apply the handbrake. I make it clear on the first lesson what the manual says and why, and that they should avoid pushing the button.when pulling the lever. However, I also make it clear that pushing the button is not a driving fault. Beyond that, I don’t care how they do it.
Vehicles which have been recalled due to brake problems such as this include various Vauxhalls. I had a Citroen Xantia and it was subject to a recall order to remedy this same kind of fault. However, cars rolling away wasn’t unknown 10, 20 or 30+ years ago. Don’t let people tell you it’s nonsense. It isn’t.
It will wear out if I use the ratchet, won’t it?
Any moving part will suffer wear-and-tear. The handbrake is a safety mechanism, and if any manufacturer started making them out of Play-doh they’d be castrated by the courts in 10 seconds flat. The ratchet is designed to last, not wear out, and if you do get one wearing out in an unusually short period of time it’s probably because it is faulty (as in the case of the Corsa D recall I mentioned above), and not because of how it has been used.
The ratchet won’t wear out abnormally quickly by using it.
So how should I apply it? Button or no button?
It doesn’t really matter. Ideally, do what the manual says. In spite of some of the utter nonsense you hear, it isn’t a conspiracy by manufacturers to make money selling replacement handbrakes. As I said above, the ratchet won’t wear out abnormally quickly if you use it.
If you ever hear a loud noise from the handbrake – like a thump or twang, or anything else that suggests it is dropping down when you let go – consider doing it differently.
I don’t like that rasping noise.
So push the button in, then. But if you’re an instructor who doesn’t like the noise (or who was taught the old way) you really ought to do a reality check before forcing your pupils to do things just to keep you happy. The ratchet is extremely quiet on modern vehicles, so maybe you think you’re hearing more than you actually are, and if your manual says you should allow it to ratchet then you might be passing on potentially dangerous habits.
I hate it when I pick up pupils who have been told to use the handbrake every time they stop.
Well, good for you. However, you need to allow for the fact that most new drivers find it difficult to assess when to do something that should be triggered by judgement or common sense, and often fall into the habit of either always doing it, or always not doing it as a result. They try to pigeon hole everything. So there is a good chance they were not actually told to apply the handbrake “every time”, and have developed that habit themselves as a “just in case” strategy (they do it with signalling to pull over or move off, amongst other things). Mine often try to do it in spite of me never having taught them to.
The Essential Skills (TES) makes it clear that you should use the handbrake where it would help you prevent the car from rolling.
It comes down to two options for many learners. Do they:
NOT use the handbrake and risk rolling?
use it EVERY TIME just in case?
The first one carries a significant risk of failing the test and is potentially dangerous. The second is not a fault, nor is it a danger to other road users in itself. The only people who see it as a problem are certain ADIs who seem annoyed by it.
It’s not so much the story, but one of the details that made this one stand out. It’s from New South Wales, Australia.
The man police arrested had already been banned from driving for 56 years! Given that he is 42 years old, that amounts to a lifetime ban.
Now that’s the way to do it. However, the fact that the man was again caught behind the wheel – this time in a stolen car – proves that some people are just assholes.
The Australian courts agreed, and refused him bail.
Of course, if this was in the UK he would probably have been released on bail and then the charges dropped due to “insufficient evidence”. And if he’d been female the courts would have apologised, freeing him/her to sue them for “stress”.
Warwickshire police breath tested nearly 800 drivers and the results show that of the 142 who were under 25, 8.5% blew positive. This compares to 5.4% for the over-25s (presumably the other 650 tested).
I won’t go into the statistical errors being committed by the Courier here, but I will ask why it is such a big surprise that young people are more likely to do it? But what makes the whole thing even worse is the comment by Superintendent Adrian McGee:
It is obvious that increased education for younger drivers about the dangers of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs is vital.
Well, it might be “obvious” to Supt McGee, but the results do not lead logically to that conclusion at all.
Young people know full well that they shouldn’t drink and drive. They also know that they shouldn’t do a lot of other things, too. They know what constitutes breaking the Law in most cases – particularly when it comes to drink driving.
But they just go ahead and do whatever they want, because they know they stand a good chance of getting away with it, and that makes for a good adrenalin rush to boast about to their mates.
That’s where the problem is. It isn’t “educating” that they need. It’s discipline.
Can you believe this story? Emma Robertson was banned for 2 years and given a 12-month prison sentence suspended for 2 years in January (link now dead, and the internet apparently wiped of any reference to the case). Here’s what she did to get that:
drove off without paying for £20 of fuel
tried to evade police by “speeding off”
drove through 3 sets of red traffic lights
rammed a police car as she was boxed in
Now, she should have been put away there and then. But she’s a woman, and no doubt had a handbag-full of mitigating circumstances that the court fell for hook, line, and sinker.
But – only six months later – Robertson, from Havant in Portsmouth, has been caught behind the wheel while banned (so she was also uninsured). She has “admitted” – that’s court-speak, because it doesn’t matter if she “admits” it or not, she’s still guilty – to the following:
driving while disqualified
driving without insurance
breaching the suspended sentence handed down last time
You really would think that this would be enough to see her serve that prison sentence, wouldn’t you? But no. Our courts are so soft on chav drivers – and the female version in particular – that the hearing “was adjourned until August” and she was “released on bail”.
She should be on remand, awaiting a longer sentence on top of the original one. Chances are that she won’t see a day inside a prison – but the inside of another car from the driver’s seat is a distinct possibility. She simply doesn’t care and is taking the piss.
The best thing you can say about her is that she is a thief. It goes downhill from there.
It won’t have escaped many people’s attention that Bradley Wiggins won the Tour de France on Sunday – the first British cyclist ever to achieve that. Obviously, he’s a superb sportsman and is fully deserving of his title. But that’s Bradley Wiggins…
However, what people may not realise is the sudden spawning of a million wannabe-Bradleys who haven’t got a clue what they’re doing. The number of ageing Spandex boys out on the roads yesterday was dramatically greater than usual. And it has carried over into today.
I’m not talking about people on normal bikes – though they’re bad enough. I’m talking full-on, 5mm wide wheels, Zentai-suited, stupid hat… the lot.
From 9am this morning until 8pm tonight the roads were full of them – and during the rush hour the idiots were using main roads instead of the cycle routes that the councils have spent millions on for them.
Bradley Wiggins apparently has only 4% body fat. The wannabes have only 4% of the intelligence of other baboons, as they attempt to take drinks from their frame-mounted bottles on narrow country roads, wobbling all over as cars held up behind try to get past, or slowing down to stop and investigate some “mechanical problem” in the middle of a busy light-controlled crossroads. And those are two real examples that I witnessed today.
Many of them were riding home from work at that time, I would imagine. You can just guess at how clever they thought themselves as they donned their Spiderman suits to look like Bradley and walked past all the secretaries in the office. And all the secretaries going “look at that prat” under their breath to each other.
Because they ARE prats. Most of them KNOW they are in the way of traffic, and they STAY in the way deliberately. The ones that DON’T know are just a danger to themselves and all around them.
The BBC is wetting its britches over Bradley’s triumph. I don’t think they’ve mentioned cycling more than a handful of times since the last Olympics, but since it became clear that the Tour de France title was won they haven’t shut up about it. This morning, even they started on about the wannabes – apparently they’re known as MAMLs – Middle Aged Men in Lycra – so I’m not the only one to have noticed this copycat behaviour (though I did observe it as long ago as March 2010).
Any motorists reading: be warned. If you hit one of the idiots you’ll get the book thrown at you. So be careful.
Update: Congratulations obviously go to Bradley for his Olympic gold medal today (1 August 2012) – but again, there was a noticeable increase in non-aerodynamic spandex-clad wallies weaving all over the roads this evening. And the hits on this particular post have also skyrocketed.
There’s obviously a lot of wannabe Bradleys out there getting ready to head on out…
This is an old post. Some of the examples are out of date, but the message is still the same.
However, what people may not realise is the sudden spawning of a million wannabe-Bradleys who haven’t got a clue what they’re doing. The number of ageing Spandex boys out on the roads yesterday was dramatically greater than usual. And it has carried over into today.
out it. This morning, even they started on about the wannabes – apparently they’re known as MAMLs – Middle Aged Men in Lycra – so I’m not the only one to have noticed this copycat behaviour (though I did observe it