NOTE: This post is from 2011. A new series began in 2013.
Well, I watched the first episode and it was reasonably interesting. You can watch the programme on Channel 5’s website (presumably for a limited time, so get it while it’s hot!)
It was touching to see Sarah get over her fear of motorways, and great to see the other woman gain confidence. But Lewis was typical of the problem on the roads today as far as many young male drivers is concerned. Still, at least he will have the comfort of knowing that he appeared on TV and initially came across as a prat – and left it looking an even bigger one.
The same might be said of a few other people. You see, his instructor said on the show that she couldn’t believe he had a licence after seeing him drive for the first time. It was obvious what she meant. But not to some people. Here’s a typical – and wholly expected – comment:
Does this imply that the ADI did not check his licence before starting the session?
The rest of the series looks interesting. Next episode looks like featuring a racerboy who eats, drinks, and uses his mobile phone at the same time whilst driving at speed without touching the wheel with his hands, and with his girlfriend in the car. Lewis the prat didn’t seem to mind driving hands-free, either.
Surprisingly, the morning after, there are actually some sensible comments being put up on the forums. You still get the one or two complete tossers (absolutely no better than Lewis, but in their own field) who insist on trying to find fault with either the female ADI who was featured, or the driving school involved – but these people usually have a track record of this sort of thing (i.e. franchise-haters, cheap-lesson haters, not even qualified ADIs, and so on).
Well, it’s about individuals with poor driving skills taking lessons to bring them up to scratch – but the people who find this blog looking for info about the show won’t be interested in that sort of minor detail. It involves driving instructors, and that’s enough.
Starting on Wednesday, 19th October, the Channel 5 series is called Dangerous Drivers’ School, and on its web page it says that “three experienced driving instructors buckle up with a collection of dangerous drivers”.
In the first episode, a pretty boy club promoter is the subject under scrutiny… or is he?
What Channel 5’s site doesn’t say is that the instructors involved in delivering the training are all from the AA, and this automatically puts them at a huge disadvantage as far as any other ADI watching the show is concerned. But it would have been the same wherever the instructors were from – any large national driving school, or independent is grist for the “professional” ADI’s mill.
You see, it is one of the requirements of being a “professional” driving instructor that you find fault with all other instructors – especially if they’re from a national driving school, even one of the reputable ones. Of course, it is also a requirement of being a “professional” ADI that you firmly believe and proselytize the belief that there are no reputable national schools out there. A third “professional” requirement is that you make badly worded, confusing innuendoes (masquerading as wit) whenever an opportunity like this arises. This occasion is no exception:
…Yep………………..I shall advise all my friends to go to the AA for free and not use my expert services for which they would have to pay…
…How can independants [sic] thrive when the big companies have a hold of the market…>
…I wonder how many non AA instructors will ask for a free lesson from the experts..!
…I am sure that AA instructors would be glad and happy to help these poor souls…
And this is before the first episode is aired. Ironically, some of those comments are from people who either used a franchise to get them to where they are today, or who are still with one (albeit, not the AA).
The AA has some more information on its own website. It apparently runs a course designed for inexperienced drivers (not learners) – this course has been available for several years (I remember that it caused a stir among the unwashed masses when it was launched), and is not new. Nowadays, it appears to be free through the AA Charitable Trust according to that website (I’m not sure what restrictions might apply, though).
But you see, any driving school out there could offer something similar if it wanted to. In fact, with so many of them offering stupid lesson prices and slitting their own throats into the bargain, you sometimes wonder why they don’t anyway. Admittedly, Channel 5 isn’t likely to be sniffing around trying to make expensive TV shows involving “Binkie’s School of Motoring” in the Scottish Highlands (I made that up). So names like the AA, BSM, and so on are automatically at an advantage.
But forfeiting any advantage from the corporate name is the free choice an ADI makes when he or she decides to go independent. You can’t go solo and take the name with you, no matter how nice it would be to do so.
Certainly, knowing how other ADIs think, you wouldn’t catch me appearing on TV doing my job (not that Channel 5 or anyone else would want me to, of course). It would be the equivalent of leaping out of a World War I trench in broad daylight on your own, wearing fluorescent green clothes, and making a lot of noise as you rushed the enemy line. Bloody stupid!
And I can’t wait to see how this develops once the show is aired and those who haven’t yet realised it’s the AA involved suddenly wise up.
As for the show, I’ll watch it – but I’m always sceptical about these things. Why? Well, if I were a crap driver, would I really want to be on TV telling everyone about it? Would I – in the process – think it wise to admit to breaking the law or endangering others?
On the other hand, if I were a complete prat with an ego problem, anxious to be on TV, would I ignore all that and leap at the chance? The answer is quite clear on that one.
That’s why I’m sceptical. The programme is quite possibly more about the complex personal issues of the people appearing, not about getting better at driving.
EDIT 22/3/2012: I understand that a new series is in the pipeline – sounds like it will be shown later this year.
A teenage dickhead – Michael Partington, 19 – was doing speeds of around 70mph in a 20mph zone. He lost control of the car, smashed into a tree, and killed a 14-year old girl in the process.
Before I continue, let’s just look at that again:
19 years old
had several passengers in the car
was driving at speeds up to 70mph in a 20mph zone
lost control
early hours of the morning
killed a 14-year old girl
she was his front-seat passenger
How long will it take for people to realise that this is a script that’s being followed, time and time again. At least 90% of young male drivers are genetically programmed to behave like prats when they pass their test and drive with their mates in the car (this rises to over 99% when you focus on certain areas of the country). It’s only by chance that more people like Annie Cochrane don’t end up on the casualty list – but in any case, even ONE such incident is more than enough.
There’s a lot to be said about the environments involved in these cases – this happened in Wigan, and you can’t help but also wonder what a 14-year old girl was doing out “in the early hours” with a moron like this. You might argue that this is irrelevant. Well, if you take the shortsighted view that the only issue here is what Partington was doing, you might be right. But if you look wider at the trend and predictability of this sort of thing, you really do have to start asking when society is going to realise it is really badly screwed up – and especially so in certain places.
Anyway, the maximum sentence for causing death by dangerous driving is 14 years in prison. When you think of what Partington did, and how he was deliberately driving (no doubt, to show off and burn off some testosterone), you can’t really see anything which might result in anything less than the maximum sentence. But he pleaded guilty, so that could knock a good few years off it.
Society really is a mess.
Oh, and the Judge hasn’t decided “on the length of the [driving] ban” he has issued while Partington is out on bail. It should be lifetime.
This is an OLD article, from way before I got my dashcam. Nowadays, I am able to record these behaviours and send them to the police.
I was on my way to a lesson yesterday afternoon. I’d stopped at traffic lights in Ruddington with a blue-grey Audi behind me (one of the “look how big a tosser I am” Audis, reg. no. RV07 WVK),. The lights went green and I moved away.
However, as I moved off an ambulance appeared from one of the side roads. I gestured to him that I’d seen him, then indicated left and pulled over on the other side of the crossing. He turned my way and went past – but as I moved off, the dickhead driving the Audi also used the opportunity to overtake where there was no space to do so, and tailgate the ambulance along the A60. They just have to do it, don’t they? And I’m sorry, but nine times out of ten its just has to be someone in an Audi.
Anyway, Mr Dickhead in the Audi followed the A60 towards West Bridgford, and this meant negotiating the Nottingham Knight roundabout. Now, a black Mercedes (reg no. KR07 UAO) had pulled out in front of me and was between me and Mr Dickhead. It was going rather slowly, and considerably below the 60mph speed limit on that stretch. At the roundabout it went into the middle lane – that’s a left-only lane (the right-hand one of two). I went into the lane to the extreme right – they only one marked for straight-ahead. As I pulled on to the roundabout – which is busy at the best of times as it cuts the A52 – the moron in the Mercedes just indicated and cut across to go ahead!
A few years ago – when that roundabout was on the West Bridgford test centre test routes – it was the scene of many a fail for those who couldn’t handle it. What’s really frightening, though, is the sheer number of people who allegedly have licences and yet who cannot deal with this, or any other roundabout properly.
As if to illustrate the point further, I was on my way to a lesson this morning along the Ring Road. On the approach to the Crown Island (or Raleigh roundabout, as it is sometimes still known), one of those dirty white roll-up light goods vans (reg. no. VA04 NOH) was in the left-hand lane. Right at the last minute – literally, within about 30 metres of the traffic lights – he indicated right, forced everyone to slow down, and cut across three lanes of traffic to get into the right-hand lane (which goes right, towards the City). However, he then used the inside lanes of the roundabout to get ahead of a few cars, because once we got back on to the Ring Road, there he was in the right-hand lane. And he still pulled back over to the left, causing everyone to slow down again.
The traffic on the roundabout at that time was fairly light. so I can only assume his lane weaving was down to absolute incompetence rather than arrogance, because he’d have got over quicker by staying where he was (and inconvenienced dozens fewer people).
And finally, after having completed that lesson I was going to, I was heading along the A60 again towards Ruddington and there was Brown Suzuki Swift (reg. no. FN61 ZKD) in front of me. As we approached the Nottingham Knight roundabout, she just drove straight on to it and then stopped in the middle to wait for a space before carrying on! As I said earlier, this roundabout cuts the A52, and people come flying on to it at close to 70mph sometimes. She was playing Russian roulette – almost certainly without being aware of the fact.
Part of me wonders how the hell they get away with it. They obviously can’t driver properly, and yet there they are, driving like idiots amongst those of us who can. But then another part of me remembers that it is those of us who can who usually prevent accidents from happening. And the final part of me knows that they often don’t get away with it – albeit often with innocent drivers suffering as a result.
The driving test needs to be much harder. And as a Pass Plus pupil was asking me yesterday, why aren’t they re-tested every 10 years?
My answer to that was that no one would ever have the guts to do it, because unless you had very low standards (making the whole exercise pointless) you’d be taking licences away from a huge percentage of the population, most of whom would have weasely excuses about “needing to get around” or “driving for a living” – and the human rights activists would have a field day.
The article says that the number of crashes involving lane changing on motorways is increasing – up a half over the last two years. It calls this kind of incident (not just on motorways, I assume) a “blind-spot accident”.
The organisation which did the research says that most accidents occur when moving from the right to the left (e.g. cutting in after overtaking).
I suppose my immediate response has to be why this is such a surprise? The way people drive is hardly conducive to not having accidents. In fact, something which is increasingly getting on my nerves when I’m out on lessons is when the car just behind you on the dual carriageway is doing 2mph over the speed limit to get past you, and then cuts into the perfect gap your pupil has left between themselves and the car in front. It’s got to the point where I say to mine “just watch this. He’s going to cut in”. And they do.
Before I go any further, let me just offer some quotations from a forum frequented by learners. These are from a topic called “Stupid things taught for the test”, and all spelling is as it appears in the forum:
[the first reply]…you definitely do not need to check you main mirror as much as they tell you to…
…The ridiculous usage of the parking brake. I mean who the **** uses a parking brake when you are doing a 3-point turn….
… Also, parallel parking can be avoided in everyday life, and you don’t to mirror check every 3 seconds…
…Push/Pull steering….
…Overuse of the handbrake. Useful if you are in a manual car on a hill, but you don’t need to apply it as often as you are told…
…Stall routine. No need to go the long way about it like you do as a learner….
…dont indicate round parked cars, dont turn the wheel when stationary [i.e. you SHOULD do these things]…
…I didn’t use my handbrake once on my test apart from parking right at the end… is it usually necessary in a test..? My instructor said technically I should but never really enforced it…
…The hazard perception test…
…I never use my handbrake, even on a hill… I never put the car in neutral… I never do that stupid awkward steering thing where you pass the wheel from hand to hand… That’s downright dangerous… I rarely drive with two hands on the wheel… I frequently go 5th -> 2nd.
…slowing down for the corner about 4 years in advance…
…All you have to do is pass the test. After that you’re chilling…
…I never use any of my external mirrors in my car, but that’s because all three are useless except for one of the offside ones – which is brilliant for pulling out onto the road from a parallel park. Interior mirror is wonderfully useful, but that’s about it, so I tend to turn my head to look instead if it’s anything I can’t see out of my rear windscreen…
…My car cruises at at 50mph on the motorway, I won’t be overtaking anybody. For other lane changes like roundabouts and junctions, I get by perfectly well (and have done for a year with no near misses or anything like that) by turning my head… I can see perfectly well what’s going on behind me through my rear view mirror…
…Oh and as other people have said, checking your mirror, you don’t need to do it as much in ‘real life’ but it’s good to get into the habit for the test…
Is it any wonder that driving standards are so poor out there? These are mostly recently passed drivers (with a few know-it-all petrol heads with relatively vast experience covering a few months or years). It’s also worrying some of the crap some of them have apparently been taught, such as check the mirrors every 3 or 5 seconds – that’s bound to give the wrong message, isn’t it?
This is just one discussion thread, but there are many others. They just don’t think mirrors or other safety-related skills are important.
The Autoblog article mentions the usual mitigating circumstances designed to deflect blame from its obvious target – cars are safer, door pillars bigger, the EU, etc. That’s bollocks.
It’s down to one thing, and one thing only: crap driving.
As an aside (well, it is related), a few months ago one of my pupils failed her test. She’s since passed, but this failure was for one thing only. She’s come to a give way line on an angled road, with traffic coming only from the left. The problem was, she’s turned the steering wheel so much that her angle was even more acute than usual, and as a result she couldn’t see traffic coming from the right for the examiner, the passenger seat, the door pillar, and so on.
How did she deal with it? She decided to just go and hope for the best.
The examiner quite rightly didn’t share her opinion and used the duals (there was someone coming), and yet to this day she maintains that it was the only thing she could have done, and that the examiner was being an arse. We had some major arguments about it in her subsequent lessons – there was no way I was going to give her an inch on such a stupid outlook. She couldn’t (and still cannot) see how she shouldn’t have got herself in that position to start with, and having done so should have asked the examiner to move his head or something until she could see.
Most worryingly, her reason for learning to drive was to be able to drive her kids to and from school.
I see the same behaviour daily. Just today on a lesson, my pupil was going ahead at a roundabout in the left lane (near Morrissons in Netherfield) then to turn left at the lights 50m further on. A woman in a silver Mercedes A160 (reg. no. FG61 CCN) got in the right lane and cut in to the left one the roundabout in front of us. It was deliberate and calculated. Even worse, she had a Baby on Board sticker in the back, so presumably her brat was in there with her. She knew she’d done it, because after she’d successfully read my lips she then spent the next 30 seconds trying to avoid making eye contact. Mind you, the fact that she used this time to peel a banana, and then break the 40mph speed limit on the Colwick Loop Road may also have had something to do with it.
SPEED kills – it’s a message that is repeated again and again and again. And yet, tragically, it’s a message which some hugely-irresponsible individuals choose to ignore.
Alan Jackson, 48-year old father of two and grandfather of two, was mowed down by Sam Griffiths, 23. Griffiths had been racing through red lights, flashing others to get out of his way and undertaking them.
It’s worth looking at that recent post about idiot drivers in order to see that Griffiths’ kind is not a rarity. The Echo shoots itself in the foot in a small way, by adding the usual (though much less sincere) caveat:
While many men of the same age are sensible and mature enough to drive safely…
I am increasingly of the opinion that the “sensible and mature” young drivers are actually in a very small minority – and the group absolutely and definitely is not populated just by the male of the species.
I say this because no matter how good someone is at driving – and how much you can teach them during lessons – the one thing you cannot do is change their attitude. Some comedians out there market themselves as life coaches who reckon they can, but they can’t. The only people who can change attitudes are 1) those with the attitude in the first place, and 2) those who helped create the attitude (i.e. the parents).
And let’s face it, #1 isn’t likely to happen anytime soon to the modded Corsa-owning jackasses out there. So the blame lies squarely at the feet of the parents.
Griffiths could have gone to prison for 14 years. He actually got 4 years and 3 months – or in other words, he could be out in little over two years, and almost certainly within three! So that’s the value set on Alan Jackson’s life (and I’d have loved to have heard the glowing references from Griffiths’ mum and dad before the little scumbag was put away).
I’m not convinced the Echo has though this through properly, though. Its solution?
Schools could begin the education of the drivers of the future before they ever get behind the wheel, while there is certainly a case for adapting driving lessons – in both cases, perhaps, pictures of road accident scenes could be shown to future drivers.
And maybe they should be told about and invited to attend an annual RoadPeace service of remembrance, when families place roses on empty chairs signifying the number of lives lost on Merseyside roads the previous year.
It’s a life and death message – and more people have got to be made to listen.
It’s almost as bad as sending them on expenses-paid holidays.
The story describes how police spotted a motorist using a laptop – he was writing answers to a quiz on the radio – and drinking coffee at the same time.
Then there is this CCTV footage of teenage idiots car surfing:
Notice the little prat on the BMX bike in the foreground – that sums up the mental (and probably, the physical) ages of the ones in the car (and the little chavette accompanying another onlooker appears suitably impressed). Too stupid to see the CCTV cameras, they didn’t realise they were being filmed. One of the drivers was Kieron Burgess (physical age 21; mental age 2). The other was 17, and “too young to be named” – but he had only passed his test two months previously. Both were banned for 12 months.
In another incident, a bus driver was seen steering using his elbows – because he was using his hands to turn the pages of a paperback he was reading (video recorded by a passenger in the link).
In another case, a Romanian trucker videoed himself dancing in his cab as he drove along a motorway, even steering with his feet at one point (video in the link). He gave the recording to a TV station – probably thinking how great he was, and yet missing that big chunk of “stupid” that was also tucked in there somewhere.
It is somewhat ironic that when I loaded the link, one of the Google Ads immediately below the story trumpets:
Caught Speeding? Avoid fine and points Call T** V****** (I won’t publicise this moron’s shady business by naming him)
And they want to raise the motorway speed limit? It’s hard to work out who are the bigger idiots. The one’s who break the law, or the ones who make it.
An interesting article on MoneyExpert.com reveals that 16% of women have had a crash or near miss as a result of applying make-up on the move!
It’s worth a reminder of the usual men vs. women argument, where women claim that they have fewer accidents than men. As I’ve pointed out many times, what with the number of men who drive compared to women, where they drive, how much they drive, why they drive, and so on, the situation is far too complex to just lock on to the “more accidents” figure. And this article seems to prove that.
Diamond – and insurance company which specialises in insuring women drivers – 25% of women put on make up whilst driving, and of those 1 in 10 take their hands off the wheel completely in order to do it!
This in itself is shocking, but the article goes on to say that women treat their cars as second homes and eat breakfast, brush their hair, and read the newspaper whilst driving.
It goes on with more frightening statistics, saying that 47% admitted to checking text messages, a third brushed their hair, a third ate breakfast, and a third drink hot drinks.
It gets even worse, with 18% admitting checking emails and 1 in 10 admitting to reading the newspaper.
The article is a little unclear when it goes on to say that 60% of women apply make up whilst driving (contradicting the 25% at the beginning), but it says that 90% of those who do it agree that it is dangerous.
Two thirds of females have applied make-up whilst having passengers on board, and a third have done it with children.
Diamond’s managing director says:
It’s shocking that quite so many women admit to doing these tasks while driving, We all have busy lives but applying your make-up, or checking emails, when you’re driving is dangerous as it means your full attention is not on the road ahead.
I wonder if this is preparation for the impending insurance hikes for women? Diamond has apparently marketed itself on lower premiums for women in the past, of course.
The results just confirm that women drivers are dangerous in their own way, and it is quite right they should be paying insurance premiums that go along with it.
I see it many times daily. The first thing many women do when they stop at traffic lights is lean over and play with their hair. And they often have the interior mirror adjusted so you can see their cleavage – which means they have it adjusted so they can look at themselves while they are driving!
You know, I’ve mentioned many times before about the idiotic things people do in front of you when they see you have L plates on the car.
Apparently, if you see a car opposite you at traffic lights with L plates on it, it means you can turn right in front of them. L plates also mean that the car wearing them must be overtaken, no matter what speed it is doing, and no matter what the speed limit is.
But I saw something today that really took the biscuit – and it had nothing to do with L plates or learner drivers.
I was heading down Radcliffe Road with a pupil through West Bridgford, and the time was 3.55pm – so traffic was beginning to build up for the rush hour, although it was free-flowing (and Radcliffe Road is a 40mph road, which is busy at the best of times). All of a sudden we came to a complete standstill for a minute or so, and I just assumed that there was a bus or something waiting for a passenger to find her purse and pay.
So, imagine my surprise when I realised it was an NG11 taxi making an illegal right turn into Priory Road. He caused a hell of a queue.
You can see from the photo (and the Google Maps link) that there is a no right turn sign and ”ahead only” painted clearly in big white letters on the road. But obviously, NG11 taxi drivers are exempt from this.
I only mention this because I have been pissed off with taxis no end today. First of all, they just pull out and do U-turns wherever the hell they want. And then there was one in Nottingham city centre (during the same lesson this afternoon) who decided that he would stop to drop someone off in the middle of the light-controlled junction of Mansfield Road/Shakespeare Street (right outside PC World), and while one lane is closed because the road is up.
Taxi drivers are among the worst drivers on the road (and lest anyone should make any assumptions here, the NG11 driver in this case was white Caucasian male, driving a black “luxury” vehicle).
Driving along the A60 in Ruddington this afternoon, I’d just gone past the roundabout near to the business park heading towards Bunny. I was following another vehicle – a small flat bed truck – when this pale yellow van (reg. no. UP04 BET – but customised to read UP 04 BET) came screaming up and overtook me, swung into a gap that wasn’t there to avoid a head-on with a car coming the opposite way, then swung out and overtook the truck over a solid white line.
He drove off at excessive speed and when I saw the “your speed” sign in Bradmore (40mph limit) after he’d gone through it was reading 50mph.
Not likely to be employed with prat plates, but hopefully the police will take note of his driving standards at some point.
