Category - News

The New, Improved Driving Test

18/10/2015

DVSA is currently conducting trials on a new-style driving test. The changes being trialled are listed here: Test changes

I don’t have a particular problem with the first two, though I do have some niggles about the satnav thing. But that last one is a real no-no as far as I’m concerned.

At the moment a candidate is expected to do one manoeuvre from turn in the road, reverse around a corner, parallel park, and reverse bay park. Before independent driving was introduced, they used to have to do two of these manoeuvres on their tests. I always supported independent driving, but I wasn’t happy at the loss of the manoeuvre – I saw it as a dumbing down of the driving test. But what they are proposing now is that instead of a candidate having to do either a turn in the road or reverse around a corner, they’d have to either drive forward into a bay and reverse out of it, or reverse and rejoin traffic (parallel park and reverse bay park are still in there). A monkey could do those things.

Pupils struggle with the reverse around a corner, and it is a significant source of test failures. However, as per this article:

Ministers want to improve the driving test pass rate, which is languishing below 50 per cent.

There’s the rub! The proposed changes are not intended to improve the driving test. They’re intended to make it easier.

Personally, I cannot understand why DVSA would want to actually test someone on something as mundane as stopping on the right side of the road. All of my pupils get to do it at one time or another, usually when we’re pulling up outside their house; but sometimes when we’re going to do a parallel park on a particular road I use, or if I need to pull over urgently and talk about something and there’s nowhere to do it on the left. I should also add that the roads we do it on are quiet urban roads – not busy A roads.

As usual, some instructors seem to be confused over what the Highway Code (HC) says. They are suggesting that it is illegal to park facing traffic so DVSA is wrong to ask candidates to do it. Here’s the actual HC wording:

Parking (rules 239 to 247)

Rule 239

Use off-street parking areas, or bays marked out with white lines on the road as parking places, wherever possible. If you have to stop on the roadside:

do not park facing against the traffic flow

[rule continues]

The section this is in in the HC is titled “Parking”, and the first bullet point says “do not park…” The $64,000 question is: if you stop temporarily, are you parking? Look at the next rule:

Rule 240

You MUST NOT stop or park on:
[rule continues]

a road marked with double white lines, even when a broken white line is on your side of the road, except to pick up or set down passengers, or to load or unload goods

[rule continues]

So, although Rule 240 says it is illegal (i.e. you MUST NOT) to park on a road with double white lines, you can stop to pick up or set down passengers, or to load/unload goods. Considering how that works in the real world, a lorry or van might stop and take up to 30 minutes – maybe more – to load or unload goods and not be breaking the Law, though if the same vehicle stopped and its driver went into the newsagents – even for less than a minute – then it would.

In Rule 239, though, there is no Law to break (i.e. do not). And since the distinction between stopping and parking has been made in Rule 240, it follows that pulling over to drop someone off (or to be tested on how well you do it) isn’t actually wrong. Even if you parked up and left your vehicle you wouldn’t be breaking any Law – you’d just be going against HC advice.

DVSA is not doing anything wrong in asking candidates to pull up on the right. It’s just so pointlessly simple an exercise that you have to question it as a replacement for the original manoeuvres.

But as I say, the government wants to increase the pass rate, and this is the way they’re going to do it.

Sexist Litter Campaign

05/10/2015

DOAADI

Assholes, News

I’m a couple of months behind on this one, but various councils in Essex have embraced a litter campaign which features these two posters.

The feminists have gone ballistic over it. I became aware of it when I updated that Ched Evans story and had a look at the Jean Hatchet blog to see if she’d wet herself over the news yet, and discovered she was wetting herself over this instead.

Apparently – and you need the frontal lobotomy that goes along with feminism get even close to seeing any wrong in it – the posters imply that men are “smart” and women are “pretty”. And as we know, that proves all men are swine to the average feminist.

Actually, if you aren’t unfortunate enough to be afflicted by the mental gymnastics required to be a feminist, what the posters actually say is that the bloke on the left is “smart” in the sartorial sense (which he is), and the woman on the right is “pretty” (which she is). The ads then play on these two words to get the anti-littering campaign across.

The people kicking up a stink only seem interested in these two posters, but there are others in the campaign, and one is shown below.

I think the one on the right is just a prototype, and it appears unfinished. However, when you look at this collection it’s not quite so easy to winkle out a sexist agenda from it. It seems that you have to be able to convince yourself that it is being suggested men are mentally smart compared with women. The use of the word “pretty” can only realistically stand any chance of getting you your 15 minutes of fame if a man says or implies it, and puts it in writing. These posters don’t really do that.

Mind you, the first two don’t, either. I guess that’s why the story is confined to a local rag and not the international media agencies.

I’m surprised this ad campaign from Suffolk didn’t attract the looney feminists.

After all, that person in the ad is a female, and that automatically means that every aspect of it must therefore be sexist. I mean, if you have the required short circuits in your brain, the ad clearly implies that women are ”tossers” (a gender-reversal in the usual meaning of that colloquial term), and that most litterers are women. The woman is also wearing nail varnish, and everyone know that this is just pandering to bestial male traits.

Tailgating And Middle Lane Hogging Update

04/10/2015

DOAADI

ADI, Bad Drivers, DSA, News

This story was published in June 2013. I’ve updated it because of some recent activity involving the registration number MAF1E.

I only reported this a few days ago, but The Sun is in on the act now. Surprisingly, The Sun story is actually more accurate than all the others. The Sun article carries this graphic, which is quite useful.

Although it focuses on middle-lane hogs in the text (like everyone else does), the graphic makes it clear that the following examples of careless driving would also be included in the new legislation:

bad lane discipline (which includes middle-lane hogging)
tailgating
not giving way at junctions
wheel-spins and handbrake turns
wrong lane on roundabout
inappropriate speed
overtaking and queue-jumping
ignoring “lane closed” signs

Also, and in spite of what some of the other stories reported or implied, the changes do not specifically apply to motorways. They will apply to all roads.

The term “careless driving” encompasses “driving without due care and attention”. The definition is quite wide, but in a nutshell you’d be guilty of driving without due care and attention if the care and skills you demonstrated in an incident were less than that which could have been expected of a reasonable, prudent, and competent driver.

The media stories give the impression that someone somewhere has specifically decided to crack down on tailgating and lane-hogging (these feature in just about every media survey of peoples’ pet hates). In fact, what they have actually decided is that getting too close to the vehicle in front and poor lane discipline – both of which you could still be prosecuted for even now – will become manageable by FPNs. That’s where the police can slap you with a fine and 3 points by the roadside. Poor lane discipline in particular covers more than just middle-lane hogging.

And it isn’t just those two things that will be included, either. People who drive dangerously through inattention, or just because they’re bad drivers, are also potentially walking a tightrope. Personally, I’ve lost count of the number of people who habitually get into the wrong lane at roundabouts and then – deliberately or otherwise – try to move across while they’re on it. Or those who cannot stay in position and cut across you (that’s an almost guaranteed test fail, and Mafie (reg. no. MAF1E, or MAF 1E) in her big-ass 4×4 on the Ring Road on Sunday should bear this in mind in future – not to mention what constitutes an illegal number plate).

Pulling out of junctions without looking properly is also on the hit list, as is showing off and driving too slowly.

Edit: Worth pointing out that I saw Mafie up to her old tricks again a few days ago (July 2013). She was on Bobbers Mill Road trying to do a U-turn across four lanes of traffic using a junction on the opposite side of the road to where she was. Absolutely no consideration for anyone except herself. She could easily have driven a few hundred metres and turned around safely – and much more quickly. This woman is incapable of driving safely – let alone of safely driving a huge 4×4.

Edit: Someone has recently (October 2015) been searching for “number plates” and “maf1e”. I did a quick check on Google to see what “maf1e” brings up and that registration number appears to be quite mobile. Someone posted a photo of a BMW X6 on a website which is similar to my Hall of Shame, with a badly parked BMW X6 in Southampton. Here it is.

To be honest, I can’t remember what model the 4×4 was in Nottingham, but it could have been an X6.

Then it gets even more curious. Apparently, there is a Rolls Royce Wraith with the registration number MAF 1E. Here’s that, dated 2012.

I’d love to know how this works. You see, as far as I know you can only use a given number plate – like MAF1E – on one specific vehicle. You can transfer it, of course, but not immediately (it takes between 4 days and six weeks, and involves changes to paperwork).

At the moment, assuming that the MAF1E I’ve seen screwing up (twice in 2013) is not the same MAF1E seen in Southampton (in 2011), the Rolls Royce (2012) and the Nottingham MAF1E appear to be driving around with the same plate – at the same time.

It’s possible that the 2011 4×4 sold its plates to the Rolls Royce in 2012, then he subsequently sold them again in 2013. In fact, as I write this, MAF1E is available to buy for about £5,400. Maybe the rich and stupid really do move these things around every few months.

Quad Bike Crash

29/09/2015

DOAADI

Bad Drivers, News

Most people will have heard about the quad bike accident in Yorkshire a couple of days ago. The level of media attention has been accelerated by the revelation that these were four “young people” between the ages of 16 and 20 who were “celebrating the birthday of the youngest victim”.

Much has also been made of the fact that a sports car was involved, and that two men were arrested on suspicion of dangerous driving (they have finally been released on bail). Somewhat less has been made of this:

West Yorkshire Police said the quad bike was unregistered…

“Unregistered” means “no insurance” and “illegal”. And all the other things that such words imply.

I’m on very delicate ground here, but I wonder if I’m really the only one out here who – when I see yet another Instagram photo of a doe-eyed pouting teen who has died – immediately sees through it and thinks “quad bike… unlicensed… fast road… birthday party… four people on it”?

The kind of quad bike I see around this way is usually a rust bucket. It is invariably being driven somewhere like Strelley or Bilborough, sounds like it’s going to explode, and – in absolutely every case – is being driven by someone who (along with his parents) should have been locked away years ago as a precautionary measure, and in a manner which just proves the point. Often, there will be two people on it – that’s the maximum number who can physically fit on the seat (four-seaters have roll bars and are more like dune buggies). Neither will be wearing crash helmets, though both will be wearing parkas or hoodies – and quite possibly some sort of mask in order to hide their features. The people who buy them do so in order to flout the Law, because they have no regard for the Law.

That’s down this way, though. Maybe it’s different up in Leeds.

Darwin Awards 2015 – Zack Davies

28/09/2015

DOAADI

Assholes, News

There is no doubt about it, Zack Davies is a retard. He was jailed for life a few weeks ago for the attempted murder of Dr Sarandev Bhambra. It was a “revenge attack” for Lee Rigby.

Now, you may recall that Lee Rigby’s murderers – Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale – were Muslim converts. They requested to be named as Mujaahid Abu Hamza and Ismail Ibn Abdullah at their trial. One of them at least had links to radical Muslim groups, and they cited the killing of Muslims by British Armed Forces as the reason for their attack on Rigby.

The thing is, as soon as I saw the name “Sarandev Bhambra” in this current incident, I thought: but that’s not a Muslim name. Then I saw a photo of Dr Bhambra outside the court, with a Sikh guy behind him. From what I can work out, that chap was his brother – Dr Tarlochan Singh Bhambra. Clearly, Zack Davies was so retarded that he couldn’t tell the difference between a Muslim and a Sikh, and was prepared to use skin colour as his guiding light.

Although I’ve included a photo of Davies, I think it’s fair to say that he’s never going to see the light of day again. And assuming he hasn’t already bred, there is also no chance whatsoever of him now doing so. And that is a great victory for mankind, even if it nearly cost Dr Bhambra his life.

Essex Parking Wardens

25/09/2015

DOAADI

Bad Drivers, News, Transport

I love this story. It seems that from Monday, teachers and parents outside Essex schools will be able to act as traffic wardens with the power to issue tickets. In what must rank as one of the greatest understatements of all time, a teaching union has warned:

…it could create conflict between staff and some parents.

I’ve mentioned this story before, but when I was working on tech support we dealt with calls from all over the country – sometimes, even from outside the UK. I think I can safely say that callers from Essex were generally the most obnoxious and aggressive of the lot. In one particular case, just after we’d had a new phone system installed which didn’t work too well, I answered one particular call with my usual cheery greeting, only to be answered with a tirade of abuse about how long he’d been waiting (a ridiculous 90 minutes). I explained that I understood his frustration and apologised to him, but I explained we had a new call handling system which had a few teething troubles that were outside the control of the support agents. His response was “don’t give me that”, and he went off again in his crass Ilford accent. I just said: “OK. You can wait another 90 minutes” and hung up.

There’s a pretty good chance this guy – and plenty of others like him – turning up in their Chelsea tractors and parking wherever they damn well like (which is why this is happening in Essex in the first place) will not take that kindly to having their crassness highlighted by others.

Thurrock council has a rose-tinted view of the potential problems:

We have teachers, parents and residents telling us time and again about frighteningly dangerous parking outside schools, but we don’t have the money to have an army of traffic wardens.

There are teachers and head teachers who try to marshal the traffic already and what they’ve said to us is that if they have the authority to issue a ticket, it’s another weapon in their armoury.

I think we will get volunteers because issuing a ticket will be the last resort – it’s about talking and cajoling people to change their behaviour and I would be delighted if we never issue a single ticket.

What planet is this moron from? It’s Essex, with Essex mothers (and fathers) involved. The problem is so widespread that they have teachers, parents, and residents reporting serious parking problems ”time and again”. And he hopes that “talking and cajoling” will avoid the need to issue “a single ticket”? Why doesn’t HE sort it out instead of leaving it to the teachers? It’s his bloody job to handle it.

I wonder if I could get good odds on predicting when the first physical conflict will place?

2015 Darwin Awards – Too Late With This One

24/09/2015

DOAADI

Assholes, News

A few months ago, all hell broke loose in the Primark store, Leicester. You see, it turns out that a security guard – who was also a man (see feminist representation below) – had approached a woman who was breastfeeding and asked her to leave.

She refused, and the guard allegedly ripped the baby from her breast and effectively dangled it like a metaphorical carrot before the metaphorical donkey, telling her that if she wanted her daughter she’d have to go and get her.

At the time of the alleged incident, the woman – Caroline Starmer, 28, of Leicester – hurried on over to the Free to Feed breastfeeding campaign page and told her tale. She further wrote that she was in “complete shock” as a result of this “horrific experience” and in “a right mess” as a result of her treatment. Indeed, she was “shot” – which anyone would be after plundering the thesaurus so completely.

As you might imagine, there were plenty of people out there who believed the story immediately. They actually WANTED to believe it – starting with the kind of people who would join a website or campaign like Free to Feed*, and followed rapidly by those who host daytime TV shows.

Even in the first article, reporting the incident just after it had happened, Primark had pointed out that there was no CCTV evidence that she’d even been approached, let alone had her child torn from her breast. It concluded:

…that the customer’s allegation is not supported by the available evidence to date.

Quite. And the reason that the allegation wasn’t supported was that it never happened. None of it. You see, Starmer, whose Facebook page contains the “profile picture” below, along with loads of photos of children (of which she apparently has four) and little else, made it up.

In actual fact, they knew as long ago as five minutes after she made the claim that she’d made it up. CCTV doesn’t lie. It took just 14 days from the initial story to the 2nd one, announcing she was being taken to court.

Leicestershire Police investigated her claims but she was charged with intent to pervert the course of justice.

Primark initially said it would investigate the allegation but after viewing in-store CCTV footage denied the incident had taken place.

Her Facebook page is curiously empty since May this year, though it appears to have been regularly used up until that time. That isn’t surprising, though I’d have liked to have seen what had been written before it was taken down.

Starmer has been warned that she could be jailed when she is sentenced in December. Hopefully, she will be (God only knows the damage she could have done if anyone of the male persuasion had been named in all this). But don’t hold your breath – she holds the aces, being a woman and a mother.

All in all, someone who really should be up for a Darwin Award if it wasn’t for the fact her DNA is already out there.

Laughably, Free to Feed has responded. In the updated BBC story, they apparently:

…apologised to Primark and said there were “no winners here”.

Actually, there are. Primark won. The police won. Justice won. Starmer lost. And Free to Feed ended up looking foolish for joining the bandwagon so readily. They added:

Our good nature and intent was completely abused by someone that we believed in good faith, and wanted to help.

Perhaps if they hadn’t been so eager to believe without having the facts, the risky matter of faith wouldn’t have been an issue. And their other comment:

What possesses people to fabricate lies on this level and drag everyone else down with them, will always be a mystery to us

Isn’t such a mystery when you consider the amount of money a woman is likely to receive if there is even the slightest degree of implied discrimination against her.

* My opinion on breastfeeding in public is as valid as anyone else’s. Perhaps more so, since it isn’t warped by the flood of hormones that seem to follow the birth of some people’s children (and I include the fathers in that), forcing them to believe that everyone else should be glad to experience every noise and bodily function their child is capable of.

I don’t care how “natural” it is: breastfeeding should be done privately in cordoned off areas intended for the purpose – not in full view of everyone. And that’s just as true when the person doing it is part of the Militant Front. A baby is quite likely to puke (“spit up” is the Earth Mommy phrase) after feeding, and if I’m eating in a restaurant I definitely do not want that forced on me any more than I want to savour the smell of a soiled nappy while I’m in the middle of a steak. (and I experienced that once when I was in France).

I shouldn’t have to. Period.

Test Waiting Times

21/09/2015

DOAADI

ADI, DVSA, News, Training

I’ve heard a lot of complaints lately about the waiting times for driving tests. DVSA knows there is a problem and it is trying to deal with it though what that article doesn’t mention is the back door solution also being looked at, which involves making the test so easy that a monkey could pass it. Mark my words: that second solution is the one that they’ll go with (assuming the public consultation that will follow the trial a) doesn’t overwhelmingly come out against it, and b) if it does, the consultation isn’t ignored).

That Despatch article explains why waiting times have gone up. First, there is the upturn in the economy, which means people are taking tests in greater numbers (for many, it adds a vital string to their bow when job hunting). Second, DVSA says it has had more examiners retiring. Third, DVSA says there has been a surge in 20-somethings taking their tests after putting it off (I’m not sure why they give this as a separate reason, as it is just the first one worded differently.

Quite frankly, DVSA should have seen the examiner crisis coming and dealt with it long before it became a problem. Come to think of it, they also ought to have anticipated the country coming out of recession, because it was pretty bloody obvious that it was going to end sooner or later. I detected the upturn as long ago as early 2014 – I wrote about it on the blog – yet DVSA says it only predicted an increase in the number of tests “late last year”. I’m sure I recall them predicting a fall in the numbers of those taking tests within the same time frame as all of this even though their own data show a sustained increase in tests from January 2013 onwards (and that was during the depths of the recession).

None of it makes any sense. And to top it all, there’s only been a 5% increase in the number of tests taken between January and March 2015 compared with the same period last year – yet waiting times have gone up by more than 100%.

Recruiting new examiners will take ages. From what I’ve read on certain forums they’re only on the situational judgement test (the earliest part of recruitment process) even now, in spite of claiming that recruitment started in October 2014 (it may be a different intake, of course, though it is more likely that “starting” something in civil service speak translates into taking almost a year before it turns into “doing” it). The actual training and probationary periods alone add up to over 10 months before anyone can be a fully-functioning examiner, and before that there are other tests intended to sort the wheat from the chaff. Allowing for the typical civil service efficiency noted above you can probably add up to six weeks of dead time between each of the stages, so we’ll be lucky if we see any examiners from this source before 2017. Of course, that leaves another possible back door open, and I can see them trying to fast track unsuitable people through the training programme.

Phew. I wrote a lot more than I intended there once I got going. The real reason I did this article, though, was the because of an item I got on the newsfeeds concerning Liverpool’s test waiting times – between 9 and 13 weeks, apparently. Well, my local test centres are officially claiming between 9 and 13 weeks, but I can assure you that one pupil who booked a test a few weeks ago could only get one in January 2016. When I worked it out, it must have been about 19 or 20 weeks. That’s around 10 weeks more than the official figure, and it’s a discrepancy I have been seeing for the whole of this year – with actual waiting times being considerably (and consistently) greater than the officially reported ones.

I also note from that news item that a local instructor is claiming that the long waiting times are costing him work, because people want tests quickly and they therefore go to other parts of the country if they can’t get them in Liverpool! Now, it may be a Liverpool thing, and perhaps people there really do go elsewhere if they can’t get an early test date. But the question I would ask is: where? The Manchester area has official waiting times of between 5 and 9 weeks, which in reality is probably closer to 15 weeks. Leeds is officially almost as bad as Liverpool. Anyone traveling further afield than that is crazy. My own pupils have been shopping around, I must admit, but only to book tests at the local test centre with the best time. Anyone who comes to me in September wanting to pass before Christmas, I tell them straight that they have got virtually no chance – and especially not if they haven’t even done their theory test yet.

Incidentally, that same instructor also claims his franchisees all have full diaries. In that case, you can’t say that you’re losing work – turning it down because you can’t accommodate it is not “losing” it. You’re only losing it if you want it and need it, but it goes elsewhere.

He also says that DVSA don’t pay examiners to work weekends anymore. Again, I can’t speak for Liverpool, but DVSA says in that Despatch article I linked to at the start that examiners are being encouraged “to work additional hours to provide more tests.” One of my current pupils has got a Sunday test in mid-October, which he booked in early August (that was 10 weeks even then), so – and as I say, unless Liverpool is different – that instructor’s comments are incorrect.

Another Liverpool instructor is quoted as saying that the number of tests decreased over the last few years. I refer again to the official DVSA figures, which do not back up this claim at all. In December 2012 they carried out around 100,000 tests, but since then the number has steadily increased, to over 150,000 in April 2015. The most tests conducted in a single month was around 170,000 in October 2007 so we are very nearly at that same level right now.

The only relevant factor has to be the number of people eligible for (and trying to) take the driving test. Irrespective of retirements or anything else, if they are conducting almost as many tests as they were back in 2007 (and they are), then if the waiting time is increasing it simply has to be just that more people want tests than in 2007! And only that.

Of course, you then have to ask who these additional test candidates really are. Can they all be 20-somethings who decided not to learn during the recession? My own observations suggest not.

Only in Manchester

19/09/2015

DOAADI

Assholes, Bad Drivers, News

Police are going to prosecute dozens of drivers who drove the wrong way on the M60 slip road near Sale in Greater Manchester.

On the other hand, ITV reports that they AREN’T being prosecuted.

It’s sufficient to point out that they are all twats, and the fact that it happened in Manchester totally fits in with a police spokesman’s comment:

The laws of the road are there for a reason, which is to protect motorists and people need to realise that they cannot do what they want, when they want.

That last line sums up the problem with our roads today.