Following in from the first post in this series, I was out with a pupil last night. Everything was fine – she was driving well, keeping to lanes… it was… well, fine.
We came to a roundabout, where ‘straight ahead’ is the first exit, and if it wasn’t for the presence of the roundabout the road would actually be almost straight, with a slight curl to the left. I pointed up the road we wanted and said:
We’re going straight ahead at the roundabout, first exit… it’s up there [I’m pointing here, remember].
So, she gets on to the roundabout – it’s not a large one – in the left lane (of three). At the exact point where we just want to follow the road ahead, she just about rips the wheel off the steering column and tries to take us across two lanes of traffic to take the right-hand 2nd exit.
It reminded me of a pupil I had last year (which I may have mentioned previously). We were on a lesson in the dark during one of the cold spells. It was -2°C outside, and the gritters were out in force. As we approached a simple two-exit roundabout (the first exit was at 90 degrees and was a left turn, the second exit was literally straight ahead), I told him we were going straight ahead.
The problem was, he didn’t even begin to think about where ‘straight ahead’ was until he’d got on to the roundabout. In the split second he had to work it out, his brain told him that ‘straight ahead’ was wherever the car was pointing. Unfortunately, this translated into trying to remove the steering wheel from the steering column to take the first exit, because that was just about visible out of the windscreen now we were at an angle on the roundabout!
When they do things like this it is a great opportunity to explain the importance of planning ahead. It also emphasises the importance of you planning ahead and bringing a spare set of underwear!
No matter how many times they do something totally unexpected, you can be sure they’ll find something else even more unexpected to scare you to death with in future.