To any PDIs out there, adiNEWS Magazine is offering a free 6 month subscription.
Just click the link (or the logo) and enter the password “sixfree”. The offer is valid to new subscribers only until May 2012.
As the blurb says, there’s no obligation. No payment. No fuss.
I’d recommend the magazine to anyone. It contains news and plenty of impartial advice, and that is what PDIs and newly-qualified ADIs need most of all.
Just when you think you’ve heard it all, a story like this comes along.
Patricia Aitken, 55, was involved in an accident in which a learner driver died. She allegedly "lost consciousness" behind the wheel – claiming that the low-calorie diet she was on was responsible.
Here’s the good bit: she was sentenced – if you can call it a “sentence” – to 240 hours community service and banned for 5 years.
The story is somewhat confusing. Aitken apparently admitted “careless driving and causing the death of… Suzanne Harkness”, who was only 22. However, it later says that she “initially denied the charge, claiming her low-calorie diet caused her to black out moments before the head-on smash”. It then goes on to say (again):
Initially, Aitken claimed a low-calorie diet which she had been on for two days may have caused her to black out.
Aitken changed her plea to guilty after the Crown produced an expert medical report which dismissed the suggestion that the diet could have caused the loss of consciousness or fainting at the wheel.
Incredibly, the accident took place in August 2009, and yet it has only been dealt with now – and with such a ridiculous outcome.
Understandably, Suzanne Harkness’ family are unhappy with the result.
Admittedly, this is an example of Scottish justice at work, but perhaps someone can explain how this case is any different to Aitken’s? Surely, being a learner is a much better excuse than being on a diet? Yet the learner was jailed (rightly) for 2 years, whereas Aitken has got off scot-free (no pun intended). And why was Aitken not charged with causing death by dangerous driving? After all, she was on the wrong side of the road and her pathetic argument about the diet was refuted and dismissed.
Suzanne Harkness’ driving instructor was also seriously injured and lost consciousness, according to the report.
Meanwhile, Sheriff Donald Corke must be entered on the Register of Judges With No Sense Whatsoever, which already has a fair few English ones on it.
This story has been on the news the last few days, and it concerns “issues” over satnav devices giving “wrong directions”.
The story is heavy on the usual media overkill. The vast majority of cases involving satnavs giving “wrong directions” are down to people being too stupid for words. The big question is not what to do with their satnav software, but whether these people should be allowed on the roads in the first place.
You’ll get lorry drivers going down roads that are too narrow for their vehicles – even though it is a perfectly legal route, and absolutely fine for anyone else. Or you’ll get people taking “the next turn right” and ending up on canal tow paths or railway lines because they’re simply too thick to recognise the difference between a road and… well, NOT a road.
Even the examples of ambulances “teetering on 100ft cliffs” would require a lot more information before I would concede the satnav was to blame. Even big-nuts emergency 
service drivers possessing all the relevant anorak certificates are capable of judgement errors in the heat of the moment.
But it isn’t specifically the satnavs which are at fault. Even if the driver were following a printed road atlas mistakes could be made.
The road shown on the left, and clipped at high zoom from Google Maps, shows nothing unusual. However, in reality where it crosses that stream (which looks like a lake on the map), there is a FORD. The corresponding Google image on the right shows this 
clearly. I take my pupils there sometimes… but not when it’s been raining, because then it COULD be as big as a lake (and often is)!
It’s only when you look at a genuine Ordnance Survey map (this one below is copied from their online resource) that there is any hint of there being anything unusual there – and even then you’ve got to be observant enough to note that the stream appears across the road and not under it. You’d need one of those huge fold-out hiking maps to get this sort of detail, but then a simple ½ mile trip to the shops would straddle three of them!
Most modern road atlases are NOT Ordnance Survey standard and this sort of information simply isn’t detailed – and even when it is you need a magnifying glass to e
ven get close to being able to identify features like this from the style of print.
There was a time when good road atlases had features like this lettered with “FORD” in tiny writing, but many such crossings have disappeared – and I suppose it saves money omitting those that remain.
It isn’t the satnavs, but the maps which are deficient – if you can call it “deficient” not to identify every tiny feature. And even then, they’re only deficient if those using them are also lacking in common sense.
My point is that even when the information is present, it is so insignificant as to be easily missed. This ford is just one example, but almost all cases of lorries getting stuck in narrow lanes, or under low bridges; and of people trying to drive up sheer cliff faces only to discover they can’t are down to stupidity (and poor road skills) on one hand, and the difficulty in providing sufficient detail to cater for such stupidity on the other.
Are satnavs going to have to now contain data on gradients? Or warnings for every single river that might have a tow path entryway near it? Or perhaps audible alerts to identify field gateways and farm driveways for the benefit of the peripatetic pillocks passing by?
It would appear that the Transport Minister thinks so.
There is an e-petition doing the rounds at the moment (I was notified via the newsfeeds). Here’s the exact petition wording:
Regulate/stop parent/relatives/friends supervising learner drivers.
Responsible department: Department for Transport
We now have two instances whereby learner drivers have caused deaths while being supervised by unqualified persons. Mr Penning wants to stop unqualified instructors (PDIs) giving driving tuition, this should include parents/spouses/relatives/friends. The Government should either make it illegal for non qualified persons to give any driving instruction whatsoever to learner drivers, or force them to attend a training course before supervising learner drivers. If Mr Penning wants professional instructors to do motorway training, then ADIs should do all the training.
I am a fully qualified ADI. I never went down the trainee licence (pinkie) route. My current check test grade means I am considered pretty good, and I like to think my pass rate reflects that.
And I actively encourage my pupils to do quality private practice with mum or dad (or whoever) whenever possible.
If I get even a whiff of the possibility of them getting insured on mum or dad’s car, I push the subject hard. I often take mum or dad (or spouse/partner) out with us on a lesson to show them what to look for.
Young people have accidents for two main reasons:
These two things are finely interwoven. However, the overriding complicating factor is that not all young people have a bad attitude, and not all of them are inexperienced to the point that it is a major issue. In other words, since the degree of interweaving can vary between none at all to almost total, and no one can actually say at what point it becomes a danger because no one can quantify it. Quite simply, not all young drivers have accidents, nor are they all likely to!
A driving instructor’s job is to turn someone who cannot drive into someone who can by dealing with the “inexperience” aspect. That’s all.
You see, the typical young learner spends maybe 1 or 2 hours with their instructor each week. They have another 150 or more to spend on doing stuff that has bugger all to do with the instructor – and they’ve also had at least 17 years in which to develop any attitude they might have. They can easily conceal (on purpose or otherwise) such attitudes during driving lessons. I mean, you’re not going to get many pupils admitting to being drug dealers, or to being on the run from doing a bank job on their driving lessons, anymore than you’ll get them boasting how they’re going to drive like complete prats when they pass.
Only a very mixed up person (and unfortunately, there are a fair few – in government AND on the Register) would ever believe that an ADI’s primary function is to change attitudes. “Lifestyle Coach and Driving Instructor” is the new advertising strapline for many.
By having mum and dad take them out, they can gain valuable road experience that, for financial reasons, they will quite possibly not get through their paid-for driving lessons. As I often say to my own pupils, you can learn all there is to know about driving in an hour or two, but being able to put it all safely into practice requires practice, which leads to experience, and that takes time.
Experience is one thing that cannot be hurried – but if the idea of having to pay for every second of it hurts, then the responsible learner will make sure they get it somewhere else. And that’s what I try to make mine do, knowing that they want to keep their spending on driving lessons to a minimum.
The e-petition is somewhat confusing. To begin with, it is clearly based on the two recent cases where a learner accidentally killed her mother, and where another learner accidentally killed a child.
At this stage, I would point out two other stories which I reported on the blog, where learners out with qualified instructors flipped the car and ruptured a gas pipe. And these are not isolated cases – I didn’t bother commenting on this one from a couple of days ago ( another learner flipping a car), and you only have to read the comments from instructors on web forums to know that accidents are not uncommon. Any of these could, under other circumstances, have resulted in deaths. Any significant accident could. An ADI sitting in the passenger seat is not a Cloak of Invincibility.
The saying “there but for the grace of God, go I” springs to mind, although I suspect the meaning will be far too subtle for many to understand.
The e-petition implies that these unfortunate deaths were a direct result of the supervising driver being unqualified. Even the second one, where the supervising driver appeared to be less capable than would be expected, could still happen even if an ADI were present. It may be less likely, but if we could foresee all possible circumstances then we’d all be gods instead of men.
The e-petition appears to confuse a number of issues. It somehow links the impending change to motorway rules to all other driving, and while I agree that this would be “neat and tidy”, there is a lot more that would have to be considered. After all, learners have never been allowed on motorways, nor is it going to be mandatory that they receive lessons on them, so there is no real issue to address with respect to mum and dad other than to warn them to keep off. On the other hand, tens of thousands of mums and dads are currently supervising their kids, and stopping this would have all sorts of social and financial implications.
The e-petition talks of supervising drivers taking “training courses”. This part makes some sense – but not when taken with all the other things the text mentions.
Overall, the e-petition is confused and doesn’t present anything like a workable solution. But more than that, it is trying to provide a solution to a problem which doesn’t really exist.
I’m sure most ADIs would welcome a system where only they were allowed to teach learners, or where any supervisor had to be trained by them. But that isn’t a basis for making it happen!
The e-petition needs 100,000 signatures before it will be considered for discussion in Parliament. It has less than 200 as I write this, and although I am sure quite a few more will sign it, 100,000 is a very large target. Once the usual agitators have had their fill, and signed just for the sake of it, the underlying questions over motive and clarity still remain.
Private practice – with mum and dad – is a vital part of the learning experience.
If anything should change, my view would be that learners should be required to take a minimum number of lessons with a qualified instructor before they go to test (along the lines of what Ireland has recently introduced), possibly with approval to put in for the test lying with the instructor (though I can see the likely opposition to that).
Well, it’s only in one area, but Peterborough’s Evening Telegraph reports that the highest number of adult non-fiction loans were for “The Official Driving Standards Agency Theory Test for Car Drivers” and “The Official Highway Code”.
The main thing to take from this is that in these tough economic times, people are still learning to drive. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that this trend is mirrored across the UK as a whole.
Mind you, with the Highway Code being freely available online, and only costing as little as £1.50 from Amazon (RRP £2.50) with free postage, or from 1p if you buy a used one, you do wonder what kind of people are getting them from libraries. It probably costs more to go there and back on the bus than it does to buy one!
However, with so many instructors saying they don’t have enough work, it makes you wonder why. One argument is that there are too many instructors, but I’m not convinced about that. Although there was a rush on people becoming instructors a few years ago, that hasn’t been the case for the last couple. To be honest, I never saw any effect on my own workload – it goes up and down throughout the year without any real predictability, but it’s always sufficient. Sometimes there’s a low in summer (and sometimes not), sometimes its at Christmas (and sometimes not, as this year has shown), sometimes it’s with the students coming back or going home (and sometimes not)…
In any case, with the recession, this industry had better get ready for another rush of people trying to become instructors.
This report in What Car? talks of plans to switch off the analogue radio service and go completely digital. It points out that 90.7% of the UK population listens to the radio every week, but only 2% have in-car DAB.
If that’s worded right, it’s like saying 90% of the population eats chicken, but only 2% buy large eggs! It’s meaningless. And deliberately alarmist.
What Car? tries to argue that cars without DAB will have less value. Well, seeing how you can get a Pure Highway (with FM transmitter) for as little as £60, you’d have to be selling one hell of a banger to someone with extremely odd priorities for it to be a significant financial burden.
And just think of that lovely clear FM spectrum to tune into when the switch-off happens. I expect that What Car? experts think that turning off the analogue signal means it isn’t there anymore!
On the radio, Halfords is advertising daily that they can fit a DAB radio into “almost any make of car”.
It reminds me of a situation I’ve mentioned before. Back in the early 80s, the standard storage device for a home computer was a cassette tape recorder. Magazines had cassette tapes stuck to the front in those days. But disk drives were becoming affordable, and many started switching to floppy disks instead.
There was uproar. Well, what it was really was the loudest and stupidest people just making a lot of noise. They opposed the change. I suppose 200-odd years ago they’d have been called Luddites. Today, they’re just idiots.
The sooner we go digital, the better.
Howard Nelson, 40, was being chased by police in Salterbeck, Cumbria, on icy roads. At one point he almost hit a postman. He has been convicted of dangerous driving and is awaiting sentence. The Judge said that the only question was whether the “inevitable prison sentence” should be suspended.
The report says:
[Nelson] said that the male police driver chasing him had fabricated his story because he fancied the female officer who was with him, and wanted to impress her.
Well, I think that should help the judge make the right decision.
I saw this in today’s newspapers – this version is from The Telegraph. A learner driver has been convicted and jailed for 2 years for killing a 9-year-old girl after losing control during her first time driving a car.
Beatrice Mawamba, 34, was described as “profoundly ignorant” about motoring and didn’t even know what the brake pedal did, according to the judge. As well as killing Shamirah Grant, she injured two other children – one of them seriously.
Mawamba was being “taught” by her husband. Initially, according to the version of the story in printed edition of The Sun, he was also charged with the same offence as his wife, but the case was dropped. Apparently, the husband was telling Mawamba to brake as they raced towards the children… but she didn’t know how to do that!
The dead girl’s parents have “forgiven those present in the car… We appreciate that such a terrible event was not intentional.”
It’s important to remember that last part, because neither of the Mawambas did this on purpose, nor was it anything specifically to do with their ethnicity (something certain “expert commentators” on some web forums have been quick to latch on to). The route they had chosen for the wife to learn to drive is one that probably millions of others have selected over the years, and one that is likely to become ever more popular given the current economic climate.
However, the tragic events involved clearly show what a huge responsibility it is both learning to drive… and teaching someone to do so.
This looks like it might be useful!
In an email alert from the DSA, they announce the imminent launch (end of 2012) of a new online booking service for businesses. It is intended to make the practical test booking process for ADIs easier and less cumbersome than it is at present (even getting on it is a nightmare with the existing system). The launch will take place in two stages.
The first (at the end of 2012) is for trainer bookers. These can book multiple tests for both named and unnamed candidates. The second stage is for other businesses – ADIs and PDIs – so that they can book tests.
The main benefit that I can see from the email is that you’ll be able to look at all available test slots without having to enter the details of the candidate. This is a major step forward. You’ll also be able to get notifications of slot cancellations – potentially, an even bigger step forward.
The email doesn’t appear to be available as a web page, so I won’t copy the whole thing here. However, Business Link – Trainer Bookings.
It’s for ADIs only, just in case any learners come across this story. You’ll need your ADI number to register.
An email alert from the DSA says that red tape is to be slashed for motorists. The key changes are:
You can see the more detailed blurb by following that link. Other changes include not needing an insurance certificate, not having to prove you have insurance when taxing your car, exemption from CPC for some drivers (e.g. farmers), changes to parking levy assessments, and altering the lost property rules for bus companies.
Quite frankly, most of it is a lot of flap about nothing – and yet it probably kept hundreds of government officials busy for months coming up with it.
I note the Red Tape Challenge link at the bottom of the page. This is a load of red tape in itself.