I received an email via the Contact Form a little earlier. It reads:
I’d like to bring to your attention some comments about this photo. I find it shocking so called professionals can make fun of this and suggest it is right or deserving of the driver or learner…
…As a Bill Plant instructor I cannot believe the comments suggesting that it isnt surprising ect…
>>Photograph removed at the request of the parents of the learner involved<<
Take my word for it, in the full-size picture the young girl looks highly traumatised, and it is quite likely that they are waiting for an ambulance to arrive. In the absence of any further information, you can just see a car on the opposite side of the road, and the school car has obviously hit something head-on – but there’s no way of knowing which way it was heading and whether it spun round. If it was heading away in the picture, it is on the correct side of the road, so who is to say what happened or who was to blame? Well, ADIs, of course, because they know everything.
As an aside, one of the most popular pages on this blog is the one that shows a BSM car upside down. I monitor search terms used to get here, and you wouldn’t believe what people ask to find that particular story. There really are some very, very nasty pieces of work around, and the word “schadenfreude” doesn’t cover them by half. Since I doubt that the general public has such a major fetish about other driving schools, it’s not hard to imagine who and what these visitors are.
I agree completely with the reader’s assessment. Any comments implying that this accident is in some way “good” or in any way typifies Bill Plant instructors or the school isn’t fit to be an instructor themselves. Some of them seem happy to give the ADI’s name out on forums, when it is absolutely none of their damned business – I mean, the only reason for doing that would be to take a swipe at the Bill Plant School.
I would hope that those involved in this childish gloating remember it the next time they’re rear-ended or are hit by another car, and some prat with a camera takes a photo and plasters it all over the internet.
For myself, I hope that both the pupil and the instructor involved in the above accident are all right. I hope that the instructor in question gets back to work as soon as possible, and that the pupil gets back to learning. The simple fact is that being a Bill Plant franchisee doesn’t make anyone a bad instructor.
A little more information is available now. The accident happened in Leeds, and it is the Topic Of The Moment on Bill Plant’s Facebook page. The Bill Plant (BP) car “crashed into a house” – though we still don’t know why.
The timeline appears to be that the accident happened on Christmas Eve. The instructor was taken to hospital. Bill Plant Ltd was unaware of the incident until 8th January, when they “received an abusive call from the householder”. The house, pupil, and instructor all survived and the police are investigating. A public apology has been issued. As I say, no one knows exactly what happened yet – the BP car didn’t just do a 90 degree turn into a house without some trigger.
As another aside, the only criticism I would have of BP is that they have a Facebook page and allow so many retards to post on it. Some of them are ADIs who aren’t franchised to BP, and BP’s reputation among many of these instructors means that they’re just there to cause trouble. BP has a proper website, but Facebook is how most pond life attempts to communicate these days.
The strata of society that these idiots occupy can be clearly gleaned from some of the comments on the BP Facebook page.
Examples:
Jessica-jayne Turbyjess Farnham
Been reading a post of a picture of one of your cars crashing into the wall of a mans home earlier n to hear that you havent even apologised also your company is a disgrace! They say young drivers are to blame theese days for accidents to me it looks like the driving instructors are to blame! Give your head a shake n apologise to the poor man your getting really bad pr at from his post if I owned my own company I no id apologise without him having to phone to ask you to do so utter disgrace
Clearly illiterate, she later attempts to back pedal after being pulled up by others over this bullshit:
Jessica-jayne Turbyjess Farnham
Look I didn’t mean to offend anyone on here, I dont use the internet for that sort of thing
Oh, you do, Turbyjess. You do. You’re one of the vilest types of troll – the kind that doesn’t know it is doing it because it’s just the kind of person you are.
Then there was:
Matthew Johnson
Oh dear…
He got two “likes” for that piece of deep thinking. See what I mean about the level of intelligence on Facebook?
Then this one, from the General Manager of a technology company:
Sarah Ward
What a bunch of cowboys u seem to be totally out of order
I hope she carries out her General Manager affairs using better grammar than that, deals with her staff less confrontationally, and is less prone to jumping to conclusions without having a clue.
Most of the primates on BP’s Facebook page seem obsessed with the concept of “an apology”. It’s ironic that most Facebook users have never apologised to anyone in their entire lives – and they probably will never do so. It’s the kind of people they are. This one, for example, seems to like the sound of his own keyboard (shame about the grammar, even though he’s allegedly a graduate) and answers himself repeatedly. Still, at least he can spell “apologise” after having repeated it so many times:
Graham Marshall
You wanna go apologise to that dude that had one of your instructors cars hit his house,, proper harsh
Yes we know the stdent n guy are fine. It was the guys irst concern befre saving u embarresment by blanking your r eg out on hs photos. a statement to the press s not the same as a personal apology to an nocent party in all this go do whats right, stop making excuses
i asume the fact the driver is fine will mean a visit from him to apologise. The pupil and his ather have been to apologise
Then there’s this guy who looks about 10 in his photo. And behaves like it, all baseball cap and walking with arms akimbo:
Scott Craigie
Shocked to read about your car crashing into a friends house, definitely wouldn’t recommend you.
This guy claims to be a managing director (of his own company):
Sir-Ian Mccaffrey
ooh ooh ooh . i have drove one of theeese [referring to the Audis] lol . strait in to a wall . please improve your breaking system
Obviously, not a very professional company with childish comments and poor spelling/grammar like that.
And I wonder if this Tech Guy’s (hint) employers know what a dickhead he is, whilst using their name in his tag on Facebook:
Jack Chopra
Is this the replacement for the car you smashed in a house?
And now there’s one from an ADI – sorry, a super-ADI, who thinks she knows it all – who reckons it should never have happened with dual controls. I’m trying hard to figure out how dual controls can prevent all accidents, but then I don’t live in the same world some people do.
You can read the rest for yourself.
It’s important to maintain the balance here, and the house owner has contacted me and explained it from his perspective. Here’s his message in full:
I’m the home-owner whose photo that is / was.
It’s genuine. The car crashed into my house and it’s crumpled where it has bounced back off our side wall. My 4 year old daughter and one year old son were in the front room the other side of that wall and got a massive scare as it made a mighty bang having hit it with enough force to write the car off.
The original post I made on their page was a comment about Bill Plant’s terrible Customer Service rather than the accident per se, learner drivers or the instructor. Obviously like most things that go viral it got OTT and hijacked by all sorts of trolls and lunatics as your rightly highlight.
After no contact from the SoM at the scene or for 15 days after the accident, I rang them, ostensibly to get their insurer’s details (which naturally my insurer’s would require).
I was dealt with by a woman who intially wouldnt identify herself, nor give me their insurer’s details (finally got them out of her) and only the first name of her manager and no email or phone number as it was ‘against company policy’.
Having asked them whether it was appropriate for me to be doing all the leg work when ‘they’ had crashed into my house I got a rather useful ‘I didnt crash into your house’ from the woman on the phone. Nice to see someone taking ownership of the issue within the company.
I said ‘bloody’ once such was my frustration, which resulted in her hanging up (though she continued the conversation when I rang back about 90s later) and they’re now are making massive schtick about me being abusive!).
Their company statement is a joke and full of inaccuracies but I simply can’t be bothered anymore.
I’ve made my point.
As you correctly point out, if they understood social media or had a proper web manager, they could have controlled and sorted this themselves.
As I said in my reply to him, my own insurance company would forbid me from becoming directly involved if a claim or police investigation was in progress. I also pointed out that the matter is really between him and BP, and that BP is reviled in the industry for complex reasons associated almost wholly with their start-up deal of “5 for £56”, and it was that which fuelled much of the ridiculous venom that was seen on Facebook and in other places.
I think this is one of those things which shouldn’t really have got into the public domain in the first place and – as is becoming increasingly obvious – involving Facebook in any way with a reputable business or genuine issue is just asking for trouble.
In the situation here, if an outsider really found it necessary to poke their nose in, the only thing they could possibly conclude is that – assuming all the information is completely accurate – perhaps BP could have handled it better. Unfortunately, any large company is likely to have difficulty in that department, and especially so if they try to do it through Facebook.
How BP handled it is simply none of the business of other ADIs. It is between the house owner and BP themselves. Other people don’t know the circumstances which led to the accident – the universal assumption that the BP car just drove into a house without any reason is typical of these idiots.
This post is attracting a lot of hits, and it seems that the concept that who is to blame, or who is liable, is between the parties directly involved is proving a little difficult for some to grasp. It is not the duty of a bunch of venomous ADI to deal with it.
I’ve written about it fairly objectively. I have not judged anyone (other than the morons who have made those idiotic comments), and especially not BP. However, the sad fact is that plenty of other ADIs are eager to be judge, jury, and executioner simply because they hate BP. Frighteningly, they actually believe the bile that comes from their own mouths!
An ADI who is franchised to Bill Plant is not automatically at fault for anything which happens on the roads. Please try to understand that!
One more thing – and I’ve explained it before for the morons who keep bringing it up – this is MY blog and comments are turned off because I’m not interested in any abuse from these bottom dwellers. Live with it.
Incidentally, as of 2017 I can find absolutely no reference to this on Google at all. I was interested in what had happened, but the news has disappeared.
As well as no information of any kind being available, even this blog article is completely absent – even if I use the exact article title. I normally appear in searches very quickly. Very curious.