Category - Driving Tests

This article in The London Evening Standard is one of those that wants to make you bang your head against a brick wall in frustration!

When The Standard says “figures show”, what it means is that someone has conducted yet another inane survey and ended up treating the results as if they actually mean something. In this case, Direct Line – which is more interested in the publicity it receives than the results of its survey – apparently “interviewed more than 1,000 parents of children who had just passed”.

One-third (32 per cent) say that driver training also leaves their children unprepared for driving on fast dual carriageways while nearly a quarter — in contrast with a UK-wide figure of 36 per cent — say that the training their children received did not even prepare the novice drivers for the capital’s roads.

Later, this is followed up with:

A total of 64 per cent of parents want a minimum supervised learning period for their children…

Excuse me! What stopped you model parents from making little Jonny or Katie take more lessons in the first place? No one was preventing you, and the instructor would have wet himself in happiness if you’d have suggested it. And what stopped you talking to the instructor and telling him what you wanted Jonny or Katie to cover? No one was stopping you from doing that, either.

In fact, any interaction you had with the instructor was probably centred on complaining about prices, and querying how many lessons it was going to take  for Jonny or Katie because you “only had four” and passed easily back in the 80s. And I bet your son or daughter went to test slightly before they should have done instead of slightly after. And that’s why the results of this survey are yet another load of crap! Because they come from hypocrites.

Of the many hundreds of people I’ve taught, I can count on the fingers of one hand those (or their parents) who have said that money is no object – and even then timescales were an issue. When you only have a month or two before you emigrate/go home or leave for Uni, and have to fit in with work commitments, holidays, and school, this tends to impact on the definition of “I’ll do whatever it takes” as far as taking lessons goes.

Another key concern for parents of young drivers was their ability to concentrate when they have passengers in the car, with half of parents saying they believe their children were distracted by their friends talking to them while driving.

So don’t let them. If you were even half way to being a decent parent you’d recognise this and put it into action.

There are also more calls for motorway training (and, therefore, testing). Well, I’d welcome being able to take my pupils on motorways, but what then? Even in Nottingham it would be a 24 minute ride from Beeston Test Centre just TO the closest motorway junction, and at least double that to travel up one junction and return to base. In London it could take hours from most test centres just because of the traffic. And UK-wide there are dozens of centres out in the sticks who simply don’t have a motorway anywhere near close enough (most of the East Coast, and almost all of Wales and Scotland, for example).

But there again, there is a simple answer. Pass Plus. Nothing is stopping all you perfect parents from forcing little Jonny or Katie to take post test training – which would include motorways. Or even just paying for a couple of specific motorway lessons for them. You could even book some refresher lessons for dual carriageways and town centres if you’re that worried – but if you really are so lacking in confidence over their abilities, why the hell did you let them go for their test in the first place? Indeed, why did you even let them learn to drive?

The driving test has never been intended as anything more than the first step on a lifelong path of learning. It has never been intended to produce perfect drivers. If I may use an analogy here, anything that happens on the roads is not down to the tools people carry in their toolboxes, but to the particular tool they decide to use in any given situation. Young drivers have usually been given all the tools they need by their instructors, and they’ve been shown how to use them properly. The fact that they then decide to use a hammer in all situations once they’re out with their mates is down to them and their upbringing.

And upbringing starts at home. With the parents.

If little Jonny or Katie smash into a tree in the dark because they were speeding with a car full of friends, the blame is much more with mummy and daddy than it is with their ex-instructor.