The latest issue of Despatch is available and can be downloaded and viewed here.
Articles this month include the public consultation on motoring services that has been launched, information about new online services for ADIs, a bit of detail about plans to improve ADI check tests, an article on rehabilitating drink drivers, and announcement over an ADI theory test disk due to be launched, and some snippets.
Very relevant at this time of year and what with the weather we’re having. This latest advice concerns breakdowns:
Rule 274
If your vehicle breaks down, think first of all other road users and:
- get your vehicle off the road if possible
- warn other traffic by using your hazard warning lights if your vehicle is causing an obstruction.
- help other road users see you by wearing light-coloured or fluorescent clothing in daylight and reflective clothing at night or in poor visibility.
- put a warning triangle on the road at least 45 metres (147 feet) behind your broken-down vehicle on the same side of the road, or use other permitted warning devices if you have them. Always take great care when placing or retrieving them, but never use them on motorways.
- if possible, keep your sidelights on if it is dark or visibility is poor.
- do not stand (or let anybody else stand) between your vehicle and oncoming traffic.
- at night or in poor visibility do not stand where you will prevent other road users seeing your lights.
It goes without saying that ignoring ROAD CLOSED signs is stupid.
I originally posted this back in February 2012. Something I saw recently made me think it was worth bumping it right back to the top. I’ve highlighted the relevant parts below.
It was the fact that people are still finding the blog on the search term “bsm on bbc watchdog” (or similar) that made me write this – harping on and on about a TV show that was shown over two years ago. Since then, BSM has gone bust and been bought up by the AA, and any issues that were reported on Watchdog back then are totally irrelevant now (and they were pretty irrelevant then). Oh, and then there’s the old one about “how much the BSM franchise costs” – that’s another one that is ancient history now that the AA is operating it, yet still gets bandied about as current. And then there are the repetitive comments about the HPT (usually by the same people), which was also introduced a long time ago. So…
There are a fair number of ADIs out there who hate the Hazard Perception Test (HPT) to distraction. There seem to be two main reasons. The first is that they simply couldn’t do it themselves when required to do so a few years back (sour grapes) and have developed an irrational hatred of it. The other is that their pupils can’t do it (or at least the ADI thinks their pupils can’t) for some reason. The first reason fuels the second in certain cases.
One of their main arguments was that it isn’t “real world” and is just a “video game”.
It’s funny, therefore, when you hear the same people trying to argue that because the HPT can penalise you for spotting hazards too early (i.e. guessing), it has therefore taught people to wait until the last minute before reacting to situations out there in the real world! This is absolute crap!
The HPT was never intended to replace the real world. It was never intended to directly reduce accidents. It was intended to introduce people to the kinds of things they needed to look out for as they began their driving careers. It was a foundation. Their driving lessons and subsequent driving experiences with their instructors would then fill in the gaps.
Prior to the HPT there was NOTHING. The ONLY introduction to hazard awareness pupils had was when they got behind the wheel. ALL their experience had to come from practice. They still have that as an absolute minimum.
There is absolutely no way that the HPT makes pupils’ awareness of hazards worse, and it is shocking to hear so-called driving instructors feeding their own personal prejudices by suggesting it does. I’ve even seen some try to suggest that accidents have increased because of it!
The latest advice from the DSA is about driving in crappy weather – more of which is forecast for the UK.
Rule 229
Before you set off:
- you MUST be able to see, so clear all snow and ice from all your windows.
- you MUST ensure that lights are clean and number plates are clearly visible and legible.
- make sure the mirrors are clear and the windows are demisted thoroughly.
- remove all snow that might fall off into the path of other road users.
- check your planned route is clear of delays and that no further snowfalls or severe weather are predicted.
One of my pupils was boasting last week how his mate could drive the van to work safely with only a small patch of the window scraped free of ice. With the aid of a pen, his finger pointing at it, and opening or closing his eyes to track the pen as my moved it, I think I successfully managed to convince him what a twat his mate is.
An email alert from the DSA advises that from 19 January 2013, driving licences in the UK 
will change to comply with new European Union rules.
To be honest, the changes aren’t that significant, so it isn’t anything to worry about.
Unfortunately, in keeping with the UK’s desire to remain backward for as long as possible, the licence will still consist of a photocard and a paper counterpart. Remember that the counterpart is that bit you put away somewhere safe and then can’t find when you need it, or which gets mangled because your wallet gets wet if you’re daft enough to keep it with you all the time.
The sooner we get biometric licences the better. But, being the UK, this is probably a decade or more away.
The latest advice from the DSA, reminding people on how to deal with ice and snow.
Rule 229
Before you set off
- you MUST be able to see, so clear all snow and ice from all your windows
- you MUST ensure that lights are clean and number plates are clearly visible and legible
- make sure the mirrors are clear and the windows are demisted thoroughly
- remove all snow that might fall off into the path of other road users
- check your planned route is clear of delays and that no further snowfalls or severe weather are predicted.
Read more about driving in icy and snowy weather.
At the moment, rain followed by sub-zero temperatures makes morning driving in particular very hazardous.
An email alert from the DSA confirming plans to “improve drink-drive rehabilitation”.
It’s actually the government, not specifically the DSA, who is doing this.
Road Safety Minister Stephen Hammond said:
“Most drivers are safe and responsible but there is a reckless minority who put lives in danger by drink driving and those drivers need to be tackled effectively.
“We are currently consulting on a package of tough measures to crack down on drink drivers, including removing their right to demand a blood or urine test. We also need to reduce the likelihood of re-offending, and providing all offenders with access to effective drink-drive rehabilitation courses is an important part of this.”
The way of reducing the likelihood of re-offending is to take their licences away permanently. That’s because most of them will re-offend – or just not get caught.
You can read the full report here.
Just moving this to the top – it’s tomorrow (Friday).
The PCS union fossils are at it again – another strike is planned for 30 November 2012.
The DSA has put out what has become a routine email advising candidates to attend their tests as normal. This is because not all examiners are stupid enough to be members of the union in the first place, and of those that are, they’re not all that stupid that they get involved in strike action.
EDIT 30/11/2012: I can’t believe people are searching for this today – the day of the strike!!!!!!
You need to contact your local test centre or – doing as they have already asked – turn up and hope for the best. You’re not going to get any useful information on the web this late.
EDIT: I’ve changed the title to one that Red might not want showing up as No. 1 on my Popular Posts list on the left! I’ve noticed that this post has been deliberately forced to stay at the top by someone keep visiting it for several days, even though it is a pretty mundane story in itself. I suspect someone is after a bit of free advertising. (As soon as I did that, the visits stopped. Odd, eh?)
RED driving school has apparently “released” some “research” – but I really think someone needs to explain to them what “research” actually is in truly scientific terms.
As I’ve mentioned in several recent posts, it is Road Safety Week, and every organisation and his dog is anxious to climb aboard the band wagon and get some valuable publicity out of it. Some are making a better job of it than others.
Let’s just state some facts, here. Young drivers make up about 12% of the driving population, but they account for 33% of road fatalities. It is difficult to get positive spin out of that, no matter how much of a youth worker you think you are.
RED’s “research” amounts to a questionnaire put to 500 young drivers – quite possibly ones taught by RED instructors. The outcome is that a third (and that’s ONLY a third) think they have fewer bad habits than their parents and drive more in accordance with the Highway Code.
RED is clearly aided and abetted in mangling any statistics that might be involved by Kent Online, who have turned it into the banner headline: Young drivers `more careful than parents’.
To start with, that’s not what the “research” found. Having fewer bad habits and knowing more about the Highway Code does not make you a “more careful” driver. You get that label by having fewer accidents – and the fact I quoted above about road fatalities is far more significant in that respect.
And one-third of respondents answering one way is NOT a majority. It means that two-thirds – a sizable majority – DON’T think they are safer than their parents or know more about the Highway Code! This is obviously the correct interpretation of the “research”, and not the one RED or Kent Online is waffling about.
Ian McIntosh, CEO of RED Driving School said: “We thought it was important to ask young drivers, both learners and newly qualified, about their thoughts on how well they drive.”
Why? The only thing you’re going to show is how wrong they are. And you succeeded. He continues:
“It’s good to see that young drivers are confident in their driving ability and believe that, because they’re going through or have recently been through the driving tuition and test procedure, they’re better placed to drive safely and competently.”
He is on a different planet here. Confidence is what gets them into near-death situations in the first place. It is lack of experience that is the problem – yet he is obviously at pains to suggest they’ve had good tuition. Tuition is not the issue. But I like this part:
“We know that, overall, young drivers have a higher tendency to drive less safely…”
Well, that’s not what you or Kent Online has just tried to report, is it? You’ve just clouded the issue, which will make any changes to the law or testing system even more difficult to progress.
Another feed on that previous story about the possibility of new drivers facing bans on carrying passengers comes from Sky News.
I wanted to mention it because it refers to Drive IQ. I’ve written about this group before. To be honest, I can’t figure out how they fit in with the BTEC anymore, because they describe themselves as “100% not-for-profit”, and yet from what I remember they used to charge a pretty hefty sum for access to the full range of learning materials and were forever looking at ways of modifying the pricing structure to increase the dire take-up rate. The last thing I saw from them suggested that you could sign up for the course at a reduced price, but had to pay extra if you wanted a certificate at the end of it! Their website still refers to “Drive IQ Pro” (delivered by an ADI), and that definitely used to involve money changing hands and I can’t see how that has changed. However, Drive IQ is being pushed in schools so perhaps that facet of it really is not-for-profit, even though funding has to come from somewhere. It’s all very confusing – and road safety shouldn’t be.
The mother of a girl killed in a road accident (young, unlicensed male driver) is backing the Drive IQ programme. She says:
When it comes to young people being safer in cars, lack of knowledge can kill. I know that only too well.
Although I feel for her, she is sadly misguided in this analysis, particularly when you consider that the driver of the car her daughter was a passenger in hit a tree at 80mph!
Lack of knowledge isn’t the problem – every driver since the dawn of time (and I’m thinking as far back as carts drawn by animals here) has had to deal with lack of knowledge, gradually building up both that and their experience until they become competent drivers.
The problem is that whereas once upon a time most teenagers wouldn’t have dreamed of stealing a car and driving illegally for fear of getting a clip round the ear, today’s crop contains far too many who wouldn’t think twice about doing it regularly. Teenagers in the past knew it was wrong, and avoided doing things that were wrong. The dividing line between right and wrong back then was clearly defined by appropriate punishments.
These days they grow up without any such divisions being built into them. That’s what the problem is. Not a lack of knowledge, but a complete inability to deal with that lack. The driver of that car the girl was killed in almost certainly wasn’t doing 80mph because he was inexperienced or “didn’t know” – he was doing it because he was a juvenile prat.
As I mentioned in a recent post on Client-centred Learning, the DSA has now introduced its own syllabus for dealing with issues relating to the higher levels of the GDE Matrix. This is much more closely aligned with the driving test, simply by virtue of being under the DSA umbrella.
The biggest problem is that no course can force any ADI to cover anything other than the absolute bare minimum required to pass the driving test. Similarly, unless the Law changes, nothing can stop an increasing number of learners wanting to pass in the shortest possible time by spending the least possible amount of money. Ironically, those most likely to want to spend the least amount of money to pass their tests are inexorably drawn towards those ADIs most likely to only cover the barest minimum of the syllabus (i.e. the ones who charge stupid low prices, and so who cannot afford to teach the full syllabus). And so the downward spiral continues.
The only flaw with the DSA syllabus – and the same flaw exists to even greater degrees with other initiatives – is that ADIs will not be forced to implement it.
And the “government” shows further naïveté when Louise Ellman, chair of the Commons Transport Select Committee, says:
There should be support for voluntary activities, perhaps in schools, perhaps in driving clubs to develop positive attitudes towards driving before people actually take their tests.
It goes far, far deeper than that.