The DSA has sent out a bulletin advising of the latest study aids for the theory test.
It would appear that the changes include sections which explain in detail (using words and pictures) the key points, and advice on how to study. There are also attempts to link the material with actual on-road situations.
Prices start at £7.99 for just a downloadable PDF, but go up to £19.99 for the “complete kit”. Note that a PDF will not provide mock test functionality – it’s just a book.
This is where I have to deviate from being in full support of the package. I advise all my pupils that the only thing they need to buy is Driving Test Success. This DVD contains everything needed to pass the test. It’s price tends to vary with time – that one I’ve linked to is £10 for the 2013 edition, but the 2012 edition is only £5.99 and I’m not aware of any real changes to the test between 2012 and 2013 (the big change was between 2011 and 2012, when they stopped publishing the actual test questions).
You can also get Driving Test Success for only £0.69 (yep! Sixty nine pence) each for the questions and HPT (hazard perception) immediately for your iPhone (no Android support, it would seem). That price is limited time, and is only correct at the time of writing.
The DSA one is certainly serviceable, but it’s just a bit expensive.
The DSA has sent out a reminder about overtaking on the hard shoulder on motorways:
Motorways
Overtaking
You MUST NOT use the hard shoulder for overtaking.
In areas where an Active Traffic Management (ATM) Scheme is in force, the hard shoulder may be used as a running lane. You will know when you can use this because a speed limit sign will be shown above all open lanes, including the hard shoulder. A red cross or blank sign above the hard shoulder means that you MUST NOT drive on the hard shoulder except in an emergency or breakdown. Emergency refuge areas have also been built into these areas for use in cases of emergency or breakdown.
Sad to see this on a newsflash this afternoon. Singing legend, Andy Williams, has died at the age of 84 after a battle with cancer.
I didn’t realise that he provided backing vocals for Bing Crosby’s Swingin’ on a Star – which dates from as far back as 1944! Blimey, that’s not long after my dad was born!
It’s funny that I know a lot of these old songs and artistes, which date from way before my birth. I remember listening to them on the radio when I was young. But when I talk to pupils on lessons, many these days don’t seem to know anything from before they were born.
Well, it looks like PCS has got all its comrades back off holiday now, and has rearranged the strike that was originally scheduled for 13 September. It is now due to take place on 21 September 2012.
The DSA has sent out an alert.
Candidates are urged to attend as normal, since not all examiners are members of the union – and of those stupid enough to be so, not all of them are that stupid that they participate in strike action.
Questions used to find the blog:
I’ve got a test that day. Why can’t the DSA just tell me whether they’re working or not?
Look, the whole point of strikes is to cause problems in order to try and get your own childish way. The DSA is NOT calling the strike – PCS (the fossil union) is. Any blame for disruption lies entirely with the union.
The DSA does not know which examiners will be out on strike. The alerts they send out explain that clearly, and it is shocking that driving instructors are still incapable of understanding this simple fact even after so many strikes in the last couple of years alone. If the DSA automatically cancelled ALL tests for that day, the disruption would be thousands of times worse. All they can do is ask you to turn up.
If you don’t like it, take it up with PCS and the government. It isn’t the DSA’s fault in any way.
This story tells of a number of “near misses” involving workmen (link removed as now dead), where drivers have stopped to remove cones so that they can drive through roadworks instead of following signed diversion routes.
The implication is that they’re even stopping on motorways (the M60 and M56) to do it, so they can use slip roads!
Between 2005 and 2010, nine road workers were killed and more seriously injured while working on England’s motorways and major A roads as a direct result of accidents involving drivers travelling past or through works.
Obviously, the concept of safety is a little hard for some Mancunians to grasp when you read this news story..
Mind you, it isn’t just in Manchester that stupidity exists. The other day I was driving along a road which has been temporarily made one-way while gas main maintenance work takes place. As I came around a bend there was some prick driving towards me – baseball cap, face like a potato with a walnut stapled to it. He knew he was driving the wrong way – he’d either ignored the No Entry sign at the end of the road, or if he was a resident he knew full well he was going the wrong way, but he probably thought he was dead clever by not taking the diversion.
The irony is that the signed diversion is a maximum of about half a mile. In his case, judging from where he was – it would have been about a quarter of that.
The police should throw the book at prats like these. And the courts should remove their licences permanently.
I’ve written before about amateur weather forecasters predicting a new ice age – and one that is much colder than all the others, of course.
They were spectacularly wrong about last winter – so wrong, in fact, it would be like guessing “heads” on a coin toss and it coming up “tails”. I mean absolutely wrong. So I wonder if the absence of any such rubbish in the press this year has got anything to do with their overall embarrassment at that (or if it’s just that the Olympics has given the papers something else to talk about).
I’ve been getting hits over the last week which suggest people are looking for a current winter weather forecast again. They never learn. This excerpt is from Exacta (as it stands at the moment – some of these websites (though not specifically Exacta) have a habit of altering their forecasts as the future turns into the present):
I expect large parts of this winter to be very cold and exceptionally snowy in comparison to last year (forecasting confidence is quite high). I also expect these conditions to arrive earlier, rather than later this winter. There may even be the potential for some of the coldest/snowiest conditions in at least a century at times within the upcoming winter.
The problem with this is – and I have to repeat myself, so forgive me – is that they said similar about last year and got it totally and utterly wrong. TOTALLY AND UTTERLY WRONG! They weren’t even partly right.
Last year’s “forecast” amounted to a guess, so how can that possibly give anyone any confidence or faith in this year’s effort? What it comes down to is that even if THIS winter WAS the worst on record, it wouldn’t have been forecasted – it would have just been randomly guessed at.
EDIT 25/11/2012: I’d just like to point out that they haven’t said anything about the floods due to torrential rain that we’ve experienced recently. You’d expect any half-decent forecaster to catch something like extended periods of rain and flooding, wouldn’t you?
Just before I went out this morning I saw an item on the local news which said that Bradley Wiggins was in Nottingham. The reporter was outside the Castle, so I made a mental note not to go anywhere near there on today’s lessons.
I picked up my first pupil at 10am from her house just off the ring road – miles away from the castle. Then we got stuck at traffic lights for nearly 15 minutes because the bloody convoy of about a hundred professional cyclists (plus a few dozen straggling Bradley-wannabes) were making for Wollaton Park. We got there exactly the same time they did, to the second. Someone up there has got it in for me, I know they have!
I’m not exaggerating when I say there must have been 40-50 police motorbikes, and at least half as many other police vehicles in attendance (any Nottingham criminals today who did their homework would have known to hit the other side of Nottingham, because there’d have been no police to worry about).
It was funny to see a group of women clap four cyclists who went by several minutes before the main cluster – I reckon they were just clapping nobodies!
When the lights changed, the jackass in front of us had just decided at that very instant to open his door and start fumbling with some papers on his passenger seat. I pipped him to remind him the lights had gone green, and just him and us got through – which would have no doubt endeared US (in a learner car, of course) to all those who had to wait again.
God knows what the police were doing directing traffic into the estate we were coming out of. It’s a dead end. And at one point there was no police bike blocking the crossroads, and yet the lights our side were on green – but about a dozen more motorcycle and support vehicles (police and non-police) sped through the red lights on the main road.
Then we had to wait at another road block for a further 5 minutes or so because the bloody cyclists had only ridden through the Park and were now off somewhere else.
As we waited, we admired the motley collection of middle-aged people carrying SLR cameras with telephoto lenses, but fiddling with small snapshot cameras and iPhones. Oh, and one or two were swathed in Union Jacks and wearing those silly felt hats you see at the FA Cup Final.
Then, for the whole lesson, everywhere was peppered with Bradley-wannabes riding very badly, with no regard for their – or anyone else’s – safety. That’s cyclists for you.
I’ve got a horrible feeling about all this. It’s taken 46 years – since the 1966 World Cup – for us to shut the hell up about the past. Now we’ve got the bloody 2012 Olympics to rattle on about until we get the next big event (and do well at it).
This story in the Times came through via the newsfeeds. I’m sorry, but it is the biggest pile of manure I’ve seen in a long time.
Driving instructors are pressing for cycle awareness to become part of the practical driving test as a way of slowing a rise in collisions with cyclists.
Translated away from media-speak, this means a handful of instructors who ride bikes themselves have watched the Tour de France and the Olympics, got all excited over it, and so have decided to have their 15 minutes of fame. They’ve run a poll, and while 75% of those responding agreed that learners should be taught about cyclists, it does not mean they think there is a problem. The questions appears to have been worded in such a way that only one outcome was possible.
The real reason that the collision rate between motor vehicles and cyclists is rising is because a very high percentage of cyclists are prats who have no road sense whatsoever, and the sheer number of them out there is on the rise. They ignore cycle paths built specially for them, and practice arrogance to the highest degree. The report even provides this answer in black and white – and then ignores it:
…the number of cyclists killed or seriously injured rose by 13 per cent in the first quarter of 2012, at a time when the number of car occupants killed or seriously injured fell by 4 per cent.
It just has to be a cyclist – someone who is already a few pumps short of fully inflated in the brain department – who can write something like that and then proceed as if exactly the opposite were true.
The real problem starts with lack of cycling proficiency testing among kids, which fell out of favour decades ago. The result is that the current crop of Bradley-wannabes (dressed in blimp costumes) haven’t got a clue. Even worse, most of them don’t want one, since it doesn’t fit in with being arrogant tossers.
Speaking for the motorist, I can guarantee right now – absolutely 100% guarantee – that not one learner driver out there thinks cyclists just bounce when they get hit by a car (no matter how well padded many of them are). I can similarly guarantee that not one learner thinks it’s OK to run over one (just like with squirrels and bunny rabbits). They already get plenty of training about how not to drive into things, and cyclists are only a special case of that – different to pedestrians, for example – because they do things that pedestrians generally don’t. Most learners are so aware of this to the extent they would rather drive headlong into an oncoming bus than approach within four car widths of any cyclist we encounter on lessons. They actually have to be stopped from overdoing it in many cases.
So to suggest that learner drivers need “training” to stop them from thinking that a typical journey must play to the script of some zombie-apocalypse movie is just bloody stupid, and coming from driving instructors, it merely reinforces what I have always said: they tend not to be the brightest sparks in the fire. In fact, they’re rapidly catching up with cyclists on that front.
Cyclists should be kept off most roads (especially clearways), dissuaded from using others, and prosecuted for not using cycle lanes when there is one less than 2 metres away from them. They should pay road tax (or whatever you want to call it) and have to pass a test in order to be allowed anywhere near a road with cars on it. Cyclist advanced stop lines at traffic lights should all be torn up, since the average cyclist will wobble his or her fat arse all the way to the front anyway – whether there’s an advanced line or not – in order to hold up as many people as possible. Either that, or they’ll just skip on to the pavement via the pedestrian crossings to avoid having to stop at all.
Martin Gibbs, British Cycling’s Policy and Legal Affairs Director, said: “We want to see learner drivers educated to see cyclists as legitimate road users who have a right to be treated with respect and consideration. We are also calling for drivers to learn safe overtaking manoeuvres.”
Well, I suppose a HEAD cyclist would be expected to come out with the most stupid comment of all. What dos he think learners get taught? Dangerous overtaking? Run over cyclists?
The people who need training are the ones on two wheels. Not four.
Update #1: I’m attracting a lot of hits from a Scottish cycling website, and it’s no surprise that they aren’t particularly enamoured of this article – from what I can see, that’s because they don’t understand the issues. I tried not to use any big words or joined up writing, but we’re talking about cyclists here…
The problem is – and all those spitting feathers over this article are incapable of seeing it – a huge number of cyclists regularly engage in the following:
no signals of any kind
riding on the pavement when it suits them
not using cycle lanes right next to them
riding across pedestrian crossings to avoid red lights
riding on to the road from the pavement without looking
riding two or more abreast and blocking traffic
looking behind and SEEING they’re blocking traffic – and continuing to do so
riding on clearways and busy dual carriageways during rush hour
riding slowly on fast roads
This is not an exhaustive list. But it is absolutely 100% accurate – the vast majority of cyclists do at least one of these things every time they go out. Many of them probably aren’t even aware they are wrong or causing inconvenience, but many know bloody well what they’re doing, and just don’t care. Both types are as bad as each other.
As I’ve said before, I used to ride with a herd of cyclists and I know exactly what they think about cars and causing hold-ups, etc.
Recently I had an email from some clown who said “cyclists have a right to be on the road”. Like all the rest, his tiny brain-like structure was incapable of understanding what this means. Let us just clarify.
Roads are primarily for cars and other motor vehicles. Cyclists and other users are allowed to use them. However, it is assumed that all road users follow their own applicable guidelines for how to behave, and to adhere to the laws and regulations which apply to everyone equally. These guidelines appear in something called The Highway Code.
I am totally opposed to anyone who abuses the rules, regulations, and guidelines. I regularly comment on bad car drivers – especially because I teach people to be good ones. I also comment on other bad road users in general, and cyclists can bleat all they want when I latch on to them – the list I gave above is highly representative of a massive proportion of bicycle riders out there.
The Spandex-clad Bradley-wannabes simply do not indicate – the only use hand signals they use of any kind are to communicate with irate drivers who can’t get past. It’s got a hundred times worse since the Tour de France and Olympics.
Remember: roads are primarily intended for motor vehicles. Being granted access to them does not make you more important than the roads’ primary users.
Those who don’t like this article are missing the point completely. But then again, if they got the point I wouldn’t be writing about them at all, would I? Still, some of the replies from people are amusing in their banality – once one person has been shocked, and said so, anyone else who says the same (and added nothing new) is just an annoying echo! The forums who see this blog and start whining are just one big, content-free echo.
The people on that Scottish site have really missed the point of this article. Their attitudes all stem from the maxim “got a bike, so I’ll do what I want”, which was one of my main underlying concerns. Absolutely nothing they’ve said suggests they believe otherwise, which proves my point entirely.
Update #2: Well, the Caledonian branch of the “I wanna be just like Bradley” association is really up in arms over this. I noticed a few hits from another source and when I tracked it back it turns out the author of the site is one of the vociferous bunch I mentioned above (from Edinburgh).
In that sense, what he is saying is not really another voice – it’s just the same voice coming from a different place (i.e. his own blog).
Sometimes, I get a pupil who I ask to turn left. They signal left, stay in the left hand lane, and… try to turn right instead. This guy (and all the other McBradley-wannabes) is just like that. He still fails completely to see the point and effectively goes off in a totally separate direction.
He calls himself a “permacyclist”, and although I’m sure that that gets a round of laughs or admiring glances at the local meets as they’re taking off their anoraks (not to mention a wiggly red line from the spellchecker), it doesn’t really have much meaning in the real world. You’re either a cyclist, or you’re not (as I’ve mentioned in passing, I am a cyclist when the fancy takes me). You don’t need any prefixes to gloss it up. Oh, and his photos reveal him to be one of the Spandex-boys, many of whom I have mentioned frequently in this blog.
In his attempts to justify his arrogant cyclists’ attitude he has concluded that I teach pupils to run over cyclists and other road users. He has concluded that all ADIs teach the same (except for his instructor, of course). You can see why I consider the majority of Bradley-wannabes as arrogant and non-too-bright, can’t you?
But he moves into very dangerous territory when he tries his hand at logic. You see, logic only works when you are objective – and simply saying that you are in your bio doesn’t make it true (especially when said blog twists everything into pro-cycling gobbledegook, and never puts the other side across). As I have said – and this is the point that they all keep missing, making the use of logic impossible for them – most cyclists DO ride poorly on the roads. They almost always DO NOT signal. They DO often nip over pedestrian crossings and pavements to avoid red lights. They DO ride THROUGH red lights (just doing it SLOWLY doesn’t make it right, guys – you’re still shooting a red). They DO ride on busy clearways when there is a cycle path running parallel to them and cause hold ups during rush hour. They DO sometimes DELIBERATELY ride several abreast when they KNOW they’re holding people up (I’ve had that from the horses’ mouths). And it goes on and on.
And virtually ALL cyclists do at least one of these things whenever they go out. Some KNOW they’re doing it. But MANY haven’t got a clue. And THAT’S why THEY need educating.
His stab at logic falters again when he argues that cyclists have driving licences, thus implying (even almost stating) that they are perfect drivers with spotless attitudes towards cyclists. This is complete rubbish – having a drivers licence doesn’t make you a good driver, and it has no effect whatsoever on your general attitude. If you decide to be a prat (and being a cyclist doesn’t automatically preclude that), or to follow the herd, then you will do it whether you have a driver’s licence or not, and whether your are in a car or on a bike. Once competence, or lack thereof, has been noted, it comes down to ATTITUDE.
He then moves his logic into the usual politically-correct territory and involves children (even posting a photo of one on his site without blurring their face in order to make a point, which is dangerous when you consider that the web is full or weirdos). No doubt his aim is to curry emotional support by bringing kids into it.
The Spandex-clad Bradley-wannabes aren’t kids. They’re “thirty-something” men (actually, since the Tour de France and Olympics, they’re any adult of any adult age). This has nothing to do with children as far as riding on busy roads and purposely causing hold-ups (or any of the other favoured pastimes) is concerned.
But since children HAVE been brought into it, it is frightening that if they are the offspring of arrogant cyclists who haven’t got a clue about road safety and their position in the pecking order when it comes to rights and responsibilities on the roads (and who wilfully ignore cycle paths, which are there for their own safety), is it any wonder that the accident rates involving cars and cyclists is increasing?
Ironically, the “under-10s” he mentions have better road sense than most Bradley-wannabes. They DON’T usually go on main roads.
Cyclists have certain responsibilities on the roads, and rules that they’re supposed to adhere to. Maybe they should try following them once in a while, instead of trying to justify their otherwise arrogant refusal to do so.
In the meantime, I’ll do what anyone who understands real logic would do – and carry on teaching my learners how to drive properly, including watching out for cyclists who may veer out without signalling, ride off pavements, ride wide or erratically, or weave through traffic on either side. That’s what ANY good driving instructor should be doing.
Update #3: Site traffic has gone through the roof again as of 9 January 2017. Another cyclists’ website has found this article (albeit five years after it was written).
I’d draw their attention to this later article also on the blog. Oh, and also that any previous email dialogue between myself and holier-than-thou forum members was not as one-sided nor as “nasty” as one party is suggesting, and that Flitwick is spelt differently to Nottingham, and – oddly enough – it also appears in a different place on most maps!
One more time: I am a cyclist myself (sometimes). I passed my cycling proficiency when I was 11. I always adhere to the rules in the Highway Code, whether in a car or on my bike. That puts me in a minority among cyclists.
At the moment, the newsfeeds are filled with stories about going back to school, being careful driving near schools, and so on. The one topic that isn’t addressed in any of the stories I’ve seen is how the idiots who actually do the school runs should drive.
As a whole, the people who drive school runs are literally the worst drivers on the planet. They stop wherever they want, and once they’ve picked up their own brats they don’t give a toss about anyone else’s. They park on corners, on yellow lines, on the yellow zig-zags – anywhere. And once they’ve loaded their brood they just drive off (or do a u-turn) without consideration for anyone else. They’re worse than taxis.
So, this woman the Mirror talks about (from Manchester) is especially entertaining when she says she drives her kids the half mile to school – but she isn’t a bad mother.
I’ve got news for you about that, dear…
The kid is not going to get any exercise if you drive her such ridiculously short distances. She’s not going to learn any sort of independence and will rely on you until she’s old enough to drive herself. She won’t mix with other kids with you mollycoddling her. You can gloss it up as much as you like, but you are being irresponsible.
Critchley had only been driving for a year after a previous conviction for dangerous driving.
Something occurred to me, though. You hear of people being arrested for driving more than quadruple the legal limit for alcohol. Yet Critchley was less than twice the limit. Looking at his photo he doesn’t look like someone who is a stranger to a few pints, or who would fall over if he sniffed a wine cork, so you can’t help wonder exactly what was going on in the peanut-sized ganglion that passes for a brain in his kind – particularly when you consider his previous form.
In a way, when people are prosecuted for drink-driving, there must be a masking effect which prevents some facts coming out.
For example, imagine that someone deliberately runs over a pedestrian – let’s say, someone they’ve had a spat with over something. If they are over the limit, might the zeal with which that is punished mask the true motive?
I’m not saying Critchley did what he did deliberately, but if he had previously been caught for driving dangerously – and given that being less than twice the legal limit doesn’t exactly send you into a coma – might there not be more to his actions than just being legally “drunk”? Could it be that he (and many others of similar kind) is psychologically unstable to begin with, and the alcohol simply enhances that?
Obviously, the concept of safety is a little hard for some Mancunians to grasp when you read this news story..
I’ve written before about 
radley Wiggins was in Nottingham. The reporter was outside the Castle, so I made a mental note not to go anywhere near there on today’s lessons.
This