Training - Diary Of An ADI

In Touch With Reality… Or Not!

18/04/2012

I noticed yet another argument about lesson prices on a forum. What always amuses me is how whenever one starts – and it is no exaggeration to say that you get at least one a fortnight, and they’re always frequented by the same people – they all behave like they’ve never talked or even thought about the subject before.

Let’s get a few things straight.

If you make introductory offers – offers which are totally unconnected to your normal price – that’s your business, and good luck to you. Just because you’re offering something as “buy one, get one free” doesn’t mean you’re giving that offer away all the time to existing customers. You’re dangling a baited hook in order to grab new people and show them how good your product is.

However, if you word your offer in such a way that it makes it look like you are also lower priced overall than everyone else, then you need to start thinking a little harder about how you’re going to avoid crashing and burning. Your “special offers” might snag a few people, but if the reality is that your price jumps dramatically at the end of a long block of cheap ones, you’re gong to lose a hell of a lot of them unless you also charge stupid normal hourly rates. Furthermore, by cheapening the entire industry with your ridiculous advertising, you’re also causing untold damage to it.

There is one cowboy-looking outfit (which appears to have originated somewhere in the North) advertising copiously on Google at the moment with a “10 lessons for £99” offer. Their website is purpose-built to hide the normal lesson price. However, they offer a 6-hour retest package at £150 (or £25 per hour). They also offer the same package but with a test thrown in for £225 (that means they’re charging you £75 for the test – the DSA only charges £62). You have to assume from this that their normal hourly lesson rate really is around the £20-£25 mark.

You see, there’s a world of difference between “first lesson free if you book 10” and “10 lessons for £99”. One of them you can offer to existing customers time and time again, it’s attractive to them, and it will keep you in business. The other is a guarantee that you are going to crash and burn at some point. You cannot expect people to accept a doubling in price after they’ve had 10 hours to accustom to the introductory price!

Offers which last over long periods are not deemed as “offers” by the people who take advantage of them. They come to accept the price as the norm, and that is detrimental to the comedian making the offer and everyone around him. HE won’t be able to climb out of the pit he’d dug for himself, and OTHERS will get pulled in.

Even if you use weasel-words to hide the price hike – perhaps by spacing the “cheap” lessons out over an entire course to try and force people to stay with you – there is the quality of the service you offer.

You can pretend you’re a great instructor until the cows come home, but if you’re trying to be one earning half as much as you could be doing, then the reality is that you’ll be a lot less “great” than you’d like to think.

It’s worth pointing out to the general public here that driving instructors DO NOT earn £25 an hour, even if that’s what they are charging for lessons. To start with, “£25 an hour” would only apply as a comparison with other salaries if the instructor was teaching for 40 hours a week. Most haven’t a cat in hell’s chance of doing that amount of work (it’s why they make stupid offers and drop prices), and are only working maybe 20 hours. Immediately, they are only making £12.50 an hour.

Even if we have an instructor who does work 30-40 hours most weeks, there is the travelling time to factor in. Add half an hour for every hour of lessons and you have the total amount of time the instructor is “at work”, if not actually “working”. Someone teaching for 40 hours could be out of the house for 60 hours or more. If you want to put a price on that dead time, it means our fully-booked instructor is really only making £17 an hour, given that he is out of the house for so long.

But that is nothing compared to business overheads. Any instructor who reckons they are paying less than about £100 a week just to keep a car on the road is a liar (at best, he is just not representative of the majority, who ARE paying at least that to maintain a car). Simply having the car sitting on the driveway costs £2.50 per hour based on a target 40 hour working week, but then you have to put fuel in it if you’re going to use the thing. If you do manage 40 hours of tuition, and if you’re doing a decent job of teaching, most normal cars will take around £200-£250 of fuel – or let’s say £5.50 per hour.

Even if you’re an instructor who reckons you’ve got a Magic Car which runs on Pixie-diesel, you’ll be spending at least £2-£3 per hour equivalent on a 40 hour week. Your £25 per hour turnover – already reduced to £17 per hour by the number of hours you have to stay out – is now down to £9 an hour.

So what you have to ask yourself is how you can finance a “10 lessons for £99” offer. What will you do if you have six pupils – maybe more – all taking the offer at the same time? And don’t forget that the comedians selling these offers WON’T be working 40 hours and WON’T be charging £25 an hour, so their equivalent hourly rate will already be much lower than £25.

Could someone really survive on what could effectively be as little as 90p per hour profit?

I think the answer is fairly obvious. So the next thing that happens is the ADI in question will try to cut his overheads, and the only one of those he can get at immediately is his fuel costs. In other words, lots of talking, little driving, and more lessons required by the pupil. You can see how it spirals downwards, can’t you?

Unfortunately, none of this is obvious to many ADIs out there – and I make no apologies for pointing out yet again that ADIs in general are certainly not renowned for being the brightest group of individuals on the planet.

By all means, make offers to attract business. But for God’s sake try to understand the effect that long-period offers deliberately designed to make you look cheap have both on yourself, and the industry as a whole.

And stop keep trying to justify it.

If you could charge £20-£25 an hour, but don’t, then you are an idiot and you’re deluding yourself if you think you’re doing anyone any favours.

Theory, Schmeery!

12/04/2012

DOAADI

ADI, Bad Drivers, Training

I was listening to a discussion in the test centre waiting room last week about the merits – or otherwise – of the Driving Theory Test (introduced in the mid-90s) over the previous method of testing driving knowledge.

For anyone who doesn’t know, in the “olden days” when you took your driving test, the examiner would ask you a couple of questions at the end. I can remember one of mine being the blue “keep left” sign, and vaguely another sign, produced from a ring-bound set of laminated cards. There might have been a question about parking – but it was a long time ago.

If you believe some people, the previous method guaranteed 100% God-like knowledge of the Highway Code for the entire lifespan of every person who passed their driving test back then. The current method, on the other hand, is apparently responsible for every road accident, the global warming problem, and possibly several major natural disasters since its inception. The Hazard Perception Test (introduced in 2002) just added knobs on to this.

It’s worth setting the record straight on this subject.

One of the main reasons the previous method was replaced was that it most definitely did not ensure God-like knowledge. Nor did what little knowledge was gained stick for more than about 5 minutes after someone passed their test. Far from it.

People generally don’t set out to not know the Highway Code (HC). Even for those who have ever bothered to read it all the way through somewhere in the distant past, the memory fades unless there is a valid reason to keep remembering it or updating it. They’ll remember things like what a big “30” in the middle of a red and white circular sign means (whether they choose to obey it or not is a different matter). They see it every day. But ask them how far away from a junction they should park, or what they should or shouldn’t do at a humpbacked bridge, or even how big a gap they should leave between themselves and the car in front, and most will have only the vaguest of ideas at best.

Driving instructors have a better reason to know the HC in detail, but even then not all of them do (it’s arguable that none do – certainly when you start bringing interpretation into things). That’s because anything other than a very basic understanding requires effort – considerable continued effort – in order to maintain knowledge at a current and correct level. Often, the only stimulus to refresh knowledge for an instructor comes as a result of being asked a question by a pupil, followed by thumbing through the HC (and there’s nothing wrong with that).

Knowledge of the HC has always been a problem, though. I suppose the big difference is that 20 or 30 years ago, more people would have considered learning it as something worthwhile than you’re likely to find today. Hell, 30 years ago, more people could actually read, and had attention spans measured in the hours rather than the seconds.

But humour aside, comprehension is a major issue. It always has been for a significant portion of society. I’m not talking about people with special needs; I’m talking about typically-educated, normal people who simply don’t understand what they are reading when they aren’t really interested. Not everyone out there is a Top Gear fanatic, who drools over the latest Audi models and who has wet dreams about being given a Race Day gift voucher at Silverstone.

Put simply, the old method was probably worse than the current test simply because it only asked a few questions. It was certainly no better, for precisely the same reason. People could afford to gamble on not knowing it in detail, and they certainly didn’t need to understand it, because the questions asked were not all that varied – a lot less varied than with the modern-day Theory Test.

Much is made of the suggestion that current learners can memorise the answers, and this is the official reason why the DSA has recently stopped publishing the actual test questions.

I’ve mentioned before that this is total bollocks (not in those words). Anyone who could memorise nearly 1,000 questions with numerous and varied multiple choice answer combinations would have people queuing up to pickle their brains after they died. They would be rather unique.

The typical (note that: I said typical) learner today probably knows more about the HC at the time they sit their test than their counterpart of 20 years ago did when they were asked their handful of questions. The problem is that two weeks later, both of them would probably have forgotten most of it.

The only way of maintaining any kind of knowledge is, as I have said, to have a reason to refresh it. There are only three ways that is going to happen:

do it purely out of interest
do it for direct monetary reward (i.e. a bribe)
do it because you have to

The first one would only catch a small number of people. The second isn’t going to happen. So, if there is genuinely a major problem with HC knowledge, the only one of those things which will catch everyone is the one involving force!

In other words, periodic re-testing.

It still wouldn’t help with the comprehension issues. But then again, what would?

Instructors Signing Off Their Own Pupils?

12/04/2012

DOAADI

ADI, DSA, News, Training

This is an old post and the ideas discussed never came to anything.

One of the possible changes to the driving test, mooted a while back and exhumed periodically, was that instructors might be allowed to sign off their own pupils for competence in the manoeuvres. I commented briefly on the idea back in 2009 when it was last aired. I should also point out that it is fortunately unlikely to ever happen.

I have never thought that it would be a good idea. But I have always though that it would be suicidal to let ADIs have a direct say in the outcome of a driving test other than through the normal training they provide, and doubly so if they could do it without anyone seeing what they were up to.

Pass Plus is a perfect example of my concerns. It is a post-test course which was intended to provide additional training and experience to new drivers after they acquired their licences. It’s content already acknowledged that many newly-qualified drivers may never have driven on rural roads, or at night, or in bad weather, or even on fast dual carriageways. Even at this stage of the discussion you have to wonder how so many learners manage to go through the entire learning process without encountering at least some of those things, but they do.

With hindsight, Pass Plus made a few mistakes. It simply didn’t allow for stupidity, greed, and dishonesty – traits which are far more widespread than many would like to believe – and ended up by:

offering reduced Insurance
allowing any ADI to register to deliver it
allowing ADIs to sign it off
allowing any module to be carried out in theory rather than practice

Reduced insurance became the only reason for 95% or more of candidates to do the course in the first place. Allowing all ADIs to sign it off (there are around 45,000 of them, remember) introduced the possibility of fraud. And allowing modules to be completed in theory merely made such fraud more likely.

The Pass Plus course brief makes it clear that any training must be done after the driving test. You cannot use what you covered with pupils on learner lessons as Pass Plus material. And yet you see instructors openly admitting to doing precisely this, presumably because they just don’t understand the instructions (or haven’t read them). There are even more examples of candidates revealing the same thing (usually by implying some clandestine agreement), and in those cases one can presume that whoever signed the course as being complete knew exactly what they were doing. After all, Pass Plus – if done properly – requires many more miles of driving per session than most instructors’ lessons would.

The Pass Plus brief also clearly says that all modules must be delivered as practical sessions wherever possible. Realistically, for most instructors this means the bad weather module is the one most likely to be covered theoretically, since one cannot guarantee bad weather. But again, you see instructors openly arguing that they don’t live near a motorway or fast dual carriageway, or that they don’t work nights. As a result, they end up covering around half of the course in theory only – and even then, I doubt very much that they spend the equivalent number of hours talking “in the classroom”, as they like to call it. The Pass Plus course has to last a minimum of 6 hours, so even if you had to catch two ferries to get to a motorway on the mainland it would still be technically possible in 99% of cases. As for not working evenings… well, you really shouldn’t be offering Pass Plus if you’re that half-hearted about your responsibilities.

I remember once seeing someone write that the nearest motorway was “over half an hour away”, and this was why they covered it in theory only. Well, I live quite close to the M1 – and it would take me half an hour to get to it with most pupils. The motorway module on the course is by far the most important one for most candidates. I don’t consider it to be “inaccessible”.

At the extreme end of the spectrum there are even people who sign off Pass Plus without doing any training at all. They pocket the money in exchange for a signature or two – and it would appear that those signatures are sometimes not even on official Pass Plus stationery, but on photocopies of it (another topic you see being discussed from time to time), thus avoiding paying for Pass Plus refill packs.

I’m sure the majority of instructors deliver Pass Plus correctly. However, those who don’t have effectively destroyed the validity of the course which – if done properly – is extremely useful to new drivers.

So I was interested to read an article from an Australian driving instructor (link now dead) about the testing system over there. I have obtained his permission to link to his website article.

Until March this year, it seems, Australian driving instructors (in the Northern Territory) were allowed to sign off pupils for driving licences. This has been stopped, and everyone now has to take a proper driving test. The instructor says that he is glad and explains why.

He received frequent calls from people saying that friends had taken lessons and got the required certificate “after 3 hours” with another instructor, so could he do the same.

He explains that the mechanism for delivering certificated courses under the Australian Quality Framework is merely paperwork-based and does not assess how people in the field actually perform. He gives an example of how trainers with skills in one discipline would be asked to deliver training in another.

He cites another example of how an organisation delivering driving courses produced training packages that said everyone would be ready to be signed off after only 8 hours practical tuition.

He says that some instructors took to the idea like ducks to water, and cars started appearing saying “NOW WE TEST YOU”.

He mentions a case he knew of where an instructor completed the written part of the test for a candidate and simply got him to sign it, and he also suggests that such dishonesty is not confined to this one incident.

He gives other examples of people be signed off after doing even fewer hours of practical training. He says that some schools specialised in “get a licence quick” programmes, whereas he and one of his colleagues were only prepared to sign off a maximum of five candidates in a one year period (i.e. the standards of driving were extremely low, so if what he was seeing were typical of drivers, how could anyone else sign them off more quickly without some compromise?)

His article is definitely worth a read. It could almost be a prediction of what would happen in the UK if such a great responsibility were ever passed to ADIs.

But to be honest, I think the authorities over here know that – which is why, as I said at the start, it will never happen.

Driving In The Wet

10/04/2012

DOAADI

DSA, News, Training

A timely reminder from the DSA about driving in wet weather.

Rule 227

In wet weather, stopping distances (PDF, 125KB) will be at least double those required for stopping on dry roads. This is because your tyres have less grip on the road. In wet weather

you should keep well back from the vehicle in front. This will increase your ability to see and plan ahead

if the steering becomes unresponsive, it probably means that water is preventing the tyres from gripping the road. Ease off the accelerator and slow down gradually

the rain and spray from vehicles may make it difficult to see and be seen

be aware of the dangers of spilt diesel that will make the surface very slippery

take extra care around pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists and horse riders

Not many people follow this advice, judging by the number of fire engines and ambulances I’ve seen racing around today.

Taking Pupils’ Children On Lessons

09/04/2012

DOAADI

ADI, Bad Drivers, Training

I noticed a discussion on a forum about whether or not you should take pupils’ children out with you when you take the parent for a driving lesson.

Well, it isn’t technically illegal. But I’d advise anyone thinking of doing it to check with their insurer first. There could easily be a clause that prohibits it – and even if there isn’t, then in the event of an accident there could be problems.

Apart from the matter of whether or not the car and occupants are covered, there is also the matter of public liability. I’m not going to try and argue one way or the other – I’ll leave that to the “legal experts” who moonlight as instructors. But I just won’t take pupils’ kids out, and that’s that. It’s my personal stance.

When it comes down to it, the main reason many instructors do take pupils’ kids out on lessons with them is that they can’t afford to lose the lesson! They then try to argue that it’s not a risk, but it is.

There was a story a few years ago in Horse & Hound, where an instructor was giving a lesson to a pupil who’d taken his/her child along. The 6-month old appeared to choke in the back seat, whereupon the instructor – and, no doubt, the learner who was being taught – turned around. The car veered across the road and hit a horse being ridden in the opposite direction.

The horse required £5,000 of veterinary treatment. The instructor was fined over £1,000 and given three points on his licence.

It would be useful to know if the instructor’s insurer met the costs of veterinary bills, etc., because as he was found guilty of driving without due care and attention, it does raise some doubt.

No one can pretend that this isn’t a genuine risk. Distraction is a known problem for parents:

Parents travelling with children in the back are statistically at even higher risk of being distracted and causing a car accident. There have been many cases where drivers have glanced in the rear-view mirror or even turned their head for a split-second to see what their kids are up to and caused a car accident as a result.

I think that sometimes driving instructors need to take a step back, put away their Big Book Of Coaching, and acknowledge where their responsibilities end. Even if they’re desperate for work or blinded by The Light, they’re driving instructors and not child-minders.

There are plenty of ways of getting learners used to distractions without risking the lives of children or other road users.

One of mine needed to learn to drive just so she could ferry her kids around. She was worried about them distracting her, and she definitely WAS very easily distracted. One time she asked if we could try driving with the radio on to see how it affected her. The instant it went on she was unable to negotiate even the simplest of junctions. She therefore learnt how distraction would be dangerous – just like it is for anyone. Some months later we tried the same exercise and things were much improved, but still not perfect.

But no matter how good a driver someone is, if a kid starts playing up in back then anyone could be distracted to a dangerous degree at one time or another.

As for whether it is allowed on test, I doubt the examiners have much choice on the matter – they’d be hung out to dry if they refused to take a mummy out if she decided she wanted to take her sprog with her, though I still wonder at the insurance implications. I can’t imagine that every driving instructor’s insurance automatically allows it.

It’s all a bit like allowing breast-feeding in public – it’s not something you want to see when you’re eating or drinking, but there’s sod all you can do about the Earth Mothers who insist on doing it.

Let’s face facts here. Knowing that you have a driving test coming up in a month or two’s time gives you plenty of time to arrange not to have the additional pressure of your kids in the back. Ending up taking your test with them there – even planning it deliberately for whatever reason – is just evidence of the ignorance and stupidity that increasingly pervades our society.

It reminds me of something that happened years ago in France when I was on a skiing trip. On the table next to us there was a French family having a full-on raclette/fondue meal, and they had a baby in a high-chair with them. We’d just had our meal served, when we were assailed by a God-awful smell. The baby has messed in its nappy. They eventually took it to the toilets to change it (after our obvious comments and glances), but the smell didn’t go with them. It screwed up our meal, that’s for sure.

Unfortunately, some rules and practices just don’t make sense. And nor do some people’s manners and ethics.

ADHD And Learner Drivers

31/03/2012

DOAADI

ADI, News, Training

An interesting American story about special needs and learner drivers. It says that young drivers with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) are between two and four times more likely to have a crash than those without the condition – which makes them more likely to crash than an adult who is legally drunk.

Researchers say that many teenagers with attention or other learning problems can become good drivers, but not easily or quickly, and that some will be better off not driving till they are older — or not at all.

It makes you wonder why they are allowed to drive at all, doesn’t it, with comments like that? And I don’t just mean American learners.

I agree with the article that inattention is an absolute major problem for this group. I’m teaching several at the moment, and the other day one of them kept looking down at the gearstick when changing up or down (something that had just cropped up on this particular lesson – he hadn’t done it before). I’d addressed it as far as I could at that point – driving at 50mph on a winding rural road – but then he did it again just as he was going into a bend. I had to bark “Dave! Mind the kerb”, to which he replied “I see what you mean” (referring to my earlier explanation of why it was important to stay alert).

The thing is, we would have hit the kerb and gone into a ditch – possibly rolling – if I hadn’t intervened. He admitted the same himself.

Imagine that (if he was a full licence holder) and did this on his own, or with friends in the car: 18 years old, rural road, on a bend, roll the car off the road, no other vehicle involved.

Does that script sound familiar? My blood runs cold at what might happen to people who can pass the test, but over whom inattention hangs as a Sword of Damocles!

American statistics suggest that ADHD affects at least 3-5% of the young population, though some studies suggest much higher figures. ADHD is apparently on the increase, and the American Society of Pediatrics says 12% of children are affected.

As that original quote suggests, those with ADHD can learn to handle it with time – sometimes. But as juveniles it is not easy to overcome.

It makes you wonder if the problem with young drivers having such a high accident rate might be something more to do with ADHD than it is to do with the instruction they received, or just their “inexperience” – as is usually trotted out. Perhaps those things exacerbate the problem, but what matters is the underlying cause and not just the easy targets.

a2om Classroom Lessons

27/03/2012

DOAADI

ADI, News, Training

I saw this in the newsfeeds about a2om’s DriveIQ course.

It’s worth pointing out that a2om started life as a definitely-for-profit driving school, which employed its instructors, and boasted they were better than anyone else in the known universe. The fallout from this still reverberates with a handful of very vociferous (but usually incoherent) individuals who pop up from time to time in various places.

This business model failed very quickly. So a2om then developed its training software and now touts this as what comes across as the best training system in the entire universe. It is also involved with pushing a BTEC in driving, which is touted as what comes across as virtually the best qualification in the universe.

From a driving instructor’s point of view, “qualifying” to deliver the BTEC using a2om’s software involves little more than half a day in a big meeting room with about a dozen people, many of whom still seem unable to deliver the modules properly at the end because of the complexity involved (when I went on it, at least two had only recently qualified as ADIs and they were barely comfortable with normal lessons). After that you are ready to deliver it and are called “a coach” – and you can boast of the fact as “CPD” if that’s the kind of thing you’re into.

The pricing structure for the course as far as new drivers is concerned is confusing. There is a free element which gives access to the software, and two levels after that which involve actual lessons (arranged with “a coach” on the approved list). Only the second – and more expensive – option gives the BTEC certificate. In effect, you pay for a certificate.

There is absolutely nothing in the DriveIQ syllabus that a good ADI wouldn’t already be covering. The only difference is that the candidate pays extra for it.

Little of that extra money goes to the instructors, and a2om is currently saying that DriveIQ is “not for profit” (how they pay their staff therefore remains a mystery). The only real instructor benefit is extra work. However, take up in anywhere but the most affluent parts of the country is almost non-existent. Indeed, the very places where most accidents seem to happen are the areas least likely to be able to afford – and have the least inclination to do – the BTEC (from what I’ve seen).

The whole thing about BTEC courses is also confusing. It seems like anyone can offer one, and many do. But they’re often not worth the paper the certificates are mass-printed on. They’re virtually impossible to fail and getting one does not in any way influence how a young person is going to drive once they get their black Corsa with wide exhaust pipe and tinted windows.

It sounds negative, I know, but it is going to take a lot more than pseudo-philanthropic ideals from a previously commercial company to sort out the problem of 17-year olds killing themselves. Fair enough, the software they have developed might be good, but it isn’t perfect and it isn’t the only option.

Just my opinion.

Ecosafe Driving – And How To Make Things More Complicated Than They Need To Be

22/03/2012

DOAADI

ADI, Bad Drivers, Tips, Training

I noticed an argument about eco-driving and overuse of the brakes, which is descending into a technical duel of opinions and misconceptions.

Ecosafe driving is a style of driving that is both safe and economical, and this is perceived as being good for the environment. The backbone of ecosafe driving is to plan ahead and know as much about what is happening around you as is possible (without compromising safety, of course). That way you can react early to situations.

Late braking and harsh acceleration are bad techniques – they always have been – and are not part of the ecosafe approach. As Driving: The Essential Skills (TES) says, these tend to increase fuel consumption. Note the word “tend”.

The reason for this is quite simple. It is pushing the accelerator (gas) which primarily affects how much fuel is used, so obviously pushing it hard and to excess (or for longer than needed) is clearly going to use a lot more gas. Harsh acceleration is therefore wasteful.

As for harsh braking, it isn’t the act of braking itself that is the problem – you don’t use more gas just by using the brake. However, if you accelerate to an unnecessary speed (which uses more gas), slamming the brakes on just wastes all that effort. So harsh braking doesn’t use gas, but it does waste it.

Of course, the whole attitude underpinning this chavvy style of driving is also likely to be increasing fuel consumption as well, so it’s a vicious circle.

As a rough guide, ecosafe driving is:

driving away smoothly without harsh acceleration
turn off your engine when safe and convenient (if you’re waiting more than a minute or two)
accelerate smoothly and gently
when safe and convenient, take your foot off the gas and use the car’s momentum to maintain speed
miss out gears when possible (block changing) as it requires shorter acceleration times (if done properly)
use the highest gear possible without making the engine strain
use engine braking when you can

There’s much more to it, but these are the ones which a driver has continual control over because it is part of their overall style.

You cannot avoid driving up hills, and if you were always going up them then your fuel consumption would be high. The best ecosafe method is to use gravity – and the brakes to stay within the limit using an appropriate gear – going downhill, and use momentum plus gentle gas in the appropriate gear going up.

You can’t get 100mpg going up a steep hill, and not being able to do so does not make you a poor ecosafe driver. Trying to do it in 5th gear would, though.

Cleaners Earn More!

22/03/2012

DOAADI

ADI, General, Training

I just noticed a Google ad which said “don’t become a driving instructor – cleaners earn more”.

It was selling cleaning franchises.

Let’s hope that every moronic driving instructor out there who is cutting their prices because they were too greedy to start on a franchise themselves, and who don’t have any work as a result realises this. That they’re further down the ladder than cleaners.

Hopefully, this will even sink into the thick skulls of those who try to justify their stupidity, and who think being a cheapo is clever.

Better yet, bugger off from this industry and go and bring the cleaning franchise one to its knees with your unique business skills!

On the other hand, let’s be brutally honest about this. There is absolutely no reason why a driving instructor should consider himself any better than a cleaner. It’s the fact that so many do – considering themselves above the police, doctors, nurses, and other medical professional – which makes the whole price-cutting saga such a sorry mess. It’s often the ones who think they’re so good who are most deeply involved in the practice.

They simply can’t see that being busy isn’t the same as making a decent wage – and that that’s the best outcome they can hope for!

Using The Clutch At Junctions

12/03/2012

DOAADI

ADI, Training

Someone found the blog on the search term “how to stop a car at a junction using clutch and brakes”.

If you’re on an upward incline, and assuming that you can already find the bite quickly and gently, the best way to do this is to slow the car enough that it won’t coast as far as the line, then use the gas/bite to gently move it forwards. In other words, it is YOU making it go towards the give way line – not the momentum of the car.

The last thing you want to be doing is flying in so fast that you’ve got to brake hard. You will panic and forget to control it gently.

You can hold the car completely still using the gas and bite on an upward slope if you can control your feet well enough. It is not good practice to do this for too long, though, as it wears out the clutch. It can also be dangerous – if people are walking behind or in front of you, for example. Use common sense to decide when to use the handbrake and when to “slip the clutch”, as it is sometimes known. When you’re ready to move off, simply apply more gas and gently raise the clutch (the amount of gas depends on the slope you’re on).

If you’re on a downward incline, obviously you’ll need to use the brake to hold the car at the give way line. You need to be able to reliably lift your foot off the brake, set the gas, and find the bite quickly, but without stalling or lurching forward.

It is often quicker and safer for new drivers to use the handbrake, and then move off in the normal way. Holding the car on the bite can result in rocking backwards and forwards (like most pratmobiles do at lights), rolling back into another car, or creeping into the path of other traffic. However, if you can teach yourself to do it it’s a great skill.

I teach my pupils how to do it on a hill fairly early on. Some never get it perfect, but then they don’t need to be able to do it perfectly in order to pass their tests and be safe drivers. At the very least, it helps them understand the clutch and how to move away properly.

But the ones who take to it never look back. As I say to them on the first lesson, when we have a few tries: “THAT is the secret to be able to drive the car. If you can do that, you can make the car do anything!”

Remember: don’t do it for too long – just if you need it for a few moments. Never do it if you have people walking in front of or behind you.

Category - Training