Stuart Low, 42, failed his driving test in Aberdeen, then verbally assaulted the examiner who failed him.
Low – there is a picture of him on this Evening Express link (long since dead) – was fined £80. Hard to read more as this publication is subscription – only.
Just a few reminders:
The reason for limiting the number of changes to three is people keep moving tests back, then back a bit more, then back a bit more… when they were obviously never going to be ready to take it in the first place. Repeated changes mess up other people’s chances of getting bookings and create administrative issues at the DSA (there’s a tendency to forget that there is more than just one person taking their test on any given day).
Contrary to what you might otherwise be told, the “three moves” rule is more to stop people booking tests pointlessly when they are not going to be ready no matter what driving school or driving instructor they are training with. It’s bad enough with three moves being available (relocating just one test for a single pupil is a real headache) - that’s probably why it isn’t publicised openly – but with more than three it would be total mayhem.
More test information can be found on the Information page of this blog.
An email alert from the DSA:
Online directory of driving instructors launched
- Only official online directory of qualified, approved driving instructors
- Over 30,000 qualified instructors signed up to the service
- Search for qualified, approved instructors in your area
A free online service making it easy for learner drivers to find qualified instructors in their area has been launched today by the Driving Standards Agency (DSA).
Find your nearest driving instructors’ is available on Directgov. It lists fully qualified driving instructors who have signed up to be listed, and allows users to search for instructors closest to them by typing in their postcode.
Learners will also be able to see if an instructor has signed up to the voluntary code of practice and if they are committed to continuing their professional development. The voluntary code of practice sets out the professional standards and business ethics expected of those working in the industry.
Road Safety Minister Mike Penning said:
“This new service will make life easier for learner drivers and parents looking for qualified instructors in their area. I hope that this will allow people to make more informed choices about who they want to teach them to drive.”
Once qualified, approved instructors are tested regularly by DSA to ensure they are delivering the required standard of instruction, and are subject to ongoing enhanced criminal record checks. They display a green badge in their windscreen during lessons.
Trainee driving instructors will not be listed in the directory. However, trainee driving instructors can do a limited amount of teaching to gain experience and must display a pink badge in their windscreen to indicate that they are not yet fully qualified.
Find your nearest driving instructors is at direct.gov.uk/finddrivinginstructor.
Useful links
- Watch a video about how to use ‘find your nearest driving instructors’
- Learning to drive or ride: Directgov – Motoring
I’m not quite sure what Penning’s involvement in this is, as the service has been avaialable for some time, dating from before his mob scraped into power.
I’ve mentioned several times the furore over the DSA’s plans to close the Workington Theory Test Centre, and how the government was sticking its nose in.
Well, at the end of the day sensible logic lost, and the junior transport minister, Mike Penning, has forced the game result. Although the test centre only does about 3,000 tests a year – it’s capacity is 15,000 tests (so it’s running at only 20% capacity) - this idiotic coalition we are suffering has decided that in spite of all the cuts being made, this is one that shouldn’t be!
Penning has said:
I am clear there should not be a gap in theory test provision in Workington.
If a suitable alternative facility is not in place by September 1, I have arranged for a mobile test centre (bus) to be temporarily placed in the area to ensure continuity.
Can you believe this idiot? The DSA was closing it because it wasn’t cost effective.
And Tony Cunningham, the Workington MP who chose this as his cause célèbre, has wasted no time adding a few noughts to his previous tag line about people having to travel miles to Carlisle (the proposed alternative). It’s now “hundreds of miles” they would have had to travel – if this had dragged on any longer, no doubt it would have risen to “thousands”.
Just to remind Mr Cunningham that Carlisle is 32 miles from Workington. So the worst that could have happened is that people would have had to travel an extra 32 miles. I don’t think that classifies as “hundreds” – except in Mr Cunningham’s strange world.
Meanwhile, the rest of us – even those who DO live “hundreds of miles” away – are going to have to pay for the three staff who are only 20% occupied.
I’ve been getting a lot of hits from people looking for driving test centre pass rates.
The DSA used to publish them alongside the details for each test centre, but you could never be sure how reliable they were or even if they even were being kept up to date. I suspect keeping them updated was the reason they stopped doing it – it must be very labour intensive to do.
However, DSA does log the data, so they are available. They recently made the data for the period April 2010 to February 2011 available – split between gender.
As I say on that page, pass rates are not a probability of passing your test. How good a driver you are controls that.
…then no knowledge whatsoever must be lethal!
This is Plymouth (link long since dead) reports on a press release concerning test centre pass rates. Basically, 152 out of 340 test centres have pass rates of 50% or more. No one seems to have bothered to calculate that this is 45% of test centres – so you could say that about half of all test centres have pass rates of 50% or more, and half have pass rate of less.
It’s a bit like saying that when you toss a coin there is a 50% chance of getting heads, and then getting all upset by it as if it’s a problem or something!
This is Plymouth is worried that the Plymouth test centre has a failure rate of 60%, whereas other Devon centres have failure rates of 49%, 45%, and 42%. Why assume that the 60% one is wrong? What about the one at 42%?
The highest failure rate was as Hermon Hill, Wanstead – 72% out of 4,826 first time tests.
The lowest failure rates are in remote Scottish communities – with tiny populations:
Examiners in places such as Mallaig, Inveraray, Islay and the Isle of Skye test barely 200 candidates between them a year.
Mallaig saw 14 first-time candidates last year and failed only 21% – or three – of them. Again, no one seems to have bothered to calculate that if they’d have failed a fourth then the failure rate would have leapt up to 29%. Fail a fifth and it’s a humongous 36%.
In Wanstead, you’d have to fail another 50 to increase the failure rate by just 1%!
It’s pretty obvious that driving around Mallaig is not the same as driving around Wanstead – except to the media. And Wanstead hardly has the same sort of clientele as Mallaig. So why the big deal?
There’s got to be more to this than meets the eye, but any two-bit rag which can’t find anything better to do than use the freedom of information (FOI) act to stir up the dirt and wave away anything it doesn’t know for certain won’t be worried about that!
Apparently, the oldest driver to take their test in Sussex last year was 91. More than 500 over 50 took it (big deal), and 13 of these were over the age of 71.
No further information is known – where they lived or if they passed or not (though it is obvious The Argus asked this, as the DSA refused to provide the information under data protection laws).
This non-story is made even more laughable by the revelation that the same number of people over 71 took tests in the preceding three years. This makes it all the more difficult to work out precisely what point the rag is making.
There’s some idle speculation from a driving instructor that the motivation must have come from having been driven around by someone else (what?), and the usual “contact scumbag@rag.co.uk if you know the silver learner driver” at the end – I’m sure these local newspapers use templates instead of writing for themselves: this is identical across at least four or them over the last couple of months. Even the morons who leave comments seem to come from the same herd.
Back to the topic: I seem to be the only one who is honest enough to admit that he shudders when he thinks of a 91-year old being allowed loose on the roads.
The July issue of Despatch is now available. Click the logo to download a copy.
In this issue there’s an article about plans to take tests closer to candidates by running them out of local council real estate or private sites. There’s some stuff about motorcycle tests, details of the compensation scheme for ADIs who have been suspended and subsequently cleared of whatever got them suspended, a bit about the Strategic Framework for road safety (the “C” word isn’t mentioned), and an article about unofficial test booking sites.
I was at the test centre this morning and an instructor had had a test cancelled. I listened to the ensuing diatribe against the DSA – ironically, after the instructor who’d be cancelled had gone – by one very vocal individual.
I won’t repeat it here, but he blamed the DSA. He reckoned that if the driving test was run by someone else (who? DSA II? A private organisation? Many private organisations on a local basis?) it wouldn’t happen.
Just for clarification: the strikes have been called by the union. The fact that the union (PCS) that some DSA staff belong to is involved is primarily one of solidarity. That, and an overwhelming desire to have a strike because they haven’t had one for a bit. The DSA hasn’t done anything to provoke this strike – it’s about pensions and opposition to change, if anything.
And you’ve just got to see this. The BBC reports on the day of action. But look at this part:
Janice Godrich, the president of PCS, joined a picket line in Glasgow. She claimed there was strong support for the action.
She said: “We’ve just seen two people, after discussions with their colleagues, turn around and decide not to go into work.
“I have to say that I think all the scare mongering, and all the intimidation quite frankly, over the last few days – particularly from senior ministers – has not had any impact on people’s resolve.”
I’d just love to have heard precisely what it was the pickets and the people who turned round said to each other. And how it was said. But of course, Ms Godrich and PCS don’t like scaremongering and indimidation, do they?
Let’s face facts here. If you decide to go into work over something which has the profile this strike has had, and then turn around and go home because of the pickets “talking” to you, it isn’t because you’ve suddenly seen the light that you failed to see all the time before! Janice Godrich needs her head examining if she thinks anyone will swallow that.
Well, the idiot unions look to have got their way. Anyone with a driving test on Thursday should prepare for the possibility of it not going ahead.
However, bear in mind that not all driving examiners are in the union, and not all those who are will take strike action anyway. So unless you hear directly from the DSA, turn up on time and keep your fingers crossed.
As a footnote, some of the comments at the bottom of that story are hilarious. I love it when people who know absolutely nothing about politics (or anything else, come to that) try to pretend that they do.