The latest issue of Despatch notes that the Hazard Perception Test is to be updated using computer generated imagery (CGI), and that the contract has been awarded to a London-based company called Jelly (I think this is their site – some superb video clips on there). Early demo videos were released in February 2012.
From the DSA’s standpoint, this change is simply intended to introduce better quality versions of the current clips. After that, additional clips will be produced presenting scenarios which would have been just too difficult or dangerous to film in real life (i.e. children, cyclists, etc.).
The thing you have to note here is that the image quality is superb. You almost have to say that it is better than real life (if that were possible). Of course, there are the usual detractors – mostly the remnants of that group of ADIs who found it difficult to pass the HPT when it was first introduced some years ago.
Any change to or comment about the HPT by DSA is like standing on an ants’ nest, as all the ADIs who don’t like it start running around yelling “HPT is crap” to anyone who will listen. But is it?
Many ADIs seem to hold the unrealistic belief that every single aspect of driving instruction and driving testing should be 100% relevant, 100% discriminating, and 100% accurate – that it should touch every person who is subject to it in exactly the same way, and to the core of their being. They are totally incapable of understanding that the real world does not work like that.
The most frequent (and most childish) accusation is that HPT is merely a “video game”. Comments of this nature usually come from people who don’t understand what they’re saying – like when children learn a rude word and keep repeating it ad nauseam without understanding it to annoy all the grown-ups. Indeed, the people who use this term the most tend to use it as their only name for the HPT – they don’t actually refer to HPT, but to the “video game”.
HPT has never been intended to be an exact duplicate of, or substitute for, the real world anymore than the practical test has ever been intended to test people on every conceivable situation they will ever encounter out on the roads. All it is is a sample – a foundation – which driving lessons and then driving on their own will enhance over a lifetime of practice. It’s like when I got my Bronze Certificate for swimming when I was in primary school – at the time it was a milestone in my development, and a stepping stone to my next challenge. At the time it was totally relevant. Today, I can swim much further than that and that certificate is totally irrelevant. HPT works the same way.
There is a lot of talk about how driving skills should be taught in schools from an early age. How do those who condemn HPT as a “video game” think that such teaching would be carried out? By allowing 7-year olds to drive cars on the roads? Or by computer simulations and other less direct means?
When I was 10 or 11 I got my cycling proficiency badge (incidentally, I’m glad to see that this is becoming popular again). Much of the training was to do with road safety, and it gave me a good grounding for when I started to go out on my own (on my bike or on foot) as I got older, and that in its turn provided more grounding for when I started to drive. You see that’s how life works – you’re not born into the world as a fully-matured human being. You have to attain maturity through experience, and it takes at least 17 years to gain enough experience to be able to pass yourself off as an adult Of course, driving (and learning to drive) is simply a very small part of being an adult, but in its own right it requires experience to be gained before someone can pass themselves off as a competent driver.
Incidentally, today’s politically correct morons would happily teach things to kids who are too young to be engaging in the activity in question. Sex education at 4,so that they can be better parents when they get/make someone pregnant at 12; how to drive – so they won’t kill themselves when they start stealing cars when they’re 8. But I digress.
I’m sure that there are an infinite number of ways people could be taught to drive. In fact, when you think about it, with around 40,000 driving instructors out there you could say there are already around 40,000 different ways being used. But there is an old saying that the end justifies the means, and as long as the end result is acceptable, what happens in the middle is pretty much irrelevant. That’s one reason I find anti-HPT sentiments so childish and irritating.
The HPT test cannot possibly make someone a poorer driver (though at least one rabid anti-HPT instructor has claimed publicly that it does). The absolute worst thing HPT could do is have no effect whatsoever on someone’s learning, and I’m sure that this is true for some people. However, there are definitely many out there – the majority, if fact – for whom HPT has a positive effect at the time they take the test. This then serves as a foundation to be built upon by their driving lessons and their own common sense once they pass their tests.
HPT isn’t perfect. It could be different and it could be better. But it isn’t crap.
In 