This came in on the newsfeeds, and tells how ex-driving instructor, Mark Netherway, set up a scam where he was charging his pupils £62 for a “driving test” and £38 for the hire of his car.
Except that the “test” was a carefully concealed mock test conducted by another driving instructor, with absolutely no chance of anyone getting a licence out of it.
The instructor carrying out the mock tests was apparently totally innocent. That strikes me as odd, because if another instructor was paying me to do a mock test on one of his pupils I’m pretty sure that that’s the first thing I’d mention when I met them. But that’s just me – as I’ve said before, some instructors really get off on dressing up and pretending to be examiners, so I suppose it’s possible that if one of these anorak-types was doing it the whole affair could go unnoticed.
The story has also been picked up on the forums and, as usual, everything is apparently the DSA’s fault. Just a couple of comments on this.
First of all, if anyone actually bothered to read the report properly, they would see that Netherway’s defence lawyer said:
He was making a success of it [being an ADI] but his livelihood is now lost to him.
“Lost to him” means that he is no longer an instructor. So people should stop trying to suggest that he might be allowed to get away with it by the big, bad DSA.
And secondly, just about every newly qualified ADI – and especially those who hyperventilate when they are going to do a mock test and get to dress up in a hi-vis jacket – has desperately wanted to get their hands on blank DL25 (Driving Test) Marking Sheets. The DSA went through a phase a couple of years ago where they even placed piles of them in test centre waiting rooms – it was entertaining to see ADIs scoop up handfuls of them. Obviously it was essential to conduct mock tests with a real sheet instead of a copy.
But according to some it would appear that the DSA is at fault for this, too. It seems that Netherway’s stupidity and dishonesty is down to the DSA making DL25s available to ADIs! A far more logical (but still wrong) conclusion would be that all ADIs are inherently dishonest and untrustworthy, and cannot be trusted with copies of the blank DL25 sheet! Or that mock tests are at the root of the problem!
Hey, this is fun! Making up blame using illogical assumptions based on prejudice.