I noticed someone comment recently that the independent driving part of the driving test is pointless and a waste of time simply because it doesn’t matter if someone fails to follow the directions accurately.
This is a rather short-sighted view. I’ve noticed time and again that in the early stages of learning, when I am giving directions, I can train pupils to use the MSM routine with no problem. The fun starts the first time I let them choose a route (maybe driving home) or if we are actually attempting a test-like independent drive with a map or road signs. Now that my voice isn’t a trigger any more, the majority of pupils immediately start missing mirror checks and signals, and some of those cases are clearly down to not having that verbal trigger. Prior to the independent driving assessment this was rarely dealt with, and it certainly wasn’t tested for.
The driving test is 40 minutes long. Until it becomes a continuously assessed year-long event (and that will be roughly around the same time that hell freezes over), it will always have limitations. Introducing the independent driving element definitely addressed one potential issue that the test previously did not.
Of course, how people choose to drive when they have passed is not the fault of the test, the examiner, the instructor, or any other third party who wouldn’t have been involved if the driver hadn’t chosen to learn to drive in the first place. It is, however, the fault of the parents – in large part.
And don’t get me started on special needs candidates who, according to some, “can’t cope” with the independent drive segment of the test. You have to wonder what these drivers will do when they pass and start driving around on their own. If they cause an accident through not driving properly, people can still die.
The simple fact is that if you go the wrong way, but do it properly, then you haven’t done anything wrong. You’re not being tested on navigation skills, you’re being tested on your ability to drive safely. However, being in the wrong lane for the turn you are going to take is NOT safe. The examiner knows this, and it’s where the faults usually come from – directly (if you cut across traffic) or indirectly (if the examiner reminds you where he wants you to go to avoid ending up on a motorway or in a canal, and you panic). Unfortunately, in real life – especially with new drivers – what someone says they were going to do and what they actually did do don’t always marry up.
Here’s an example from a lesson tonight. I had to stop a pupil from entering a tight, two-laned roundabout which she had approached too fast. Even if the roundabout had been clear, there was no way she would have kept in lane had she entered it at the speed she was doing, and there was no way of knowing what she would have done – or which exit she would have headed for in her panic – once she realised what was happening. Subsequently, there was no way whatsoever I was going to wait to find out, and I used the dual controls. After we stopped to discuss it, she insisted that she was going to brake, but that I had beaten her to it. I pointed out the following (more diplomatically):
- if my internal panic-o-meter maxes out then I will take action
- if I have to take action, then you were too late
- it doesn’t matter what you say you were going to do – you didn’t do it by the time I had to
- I am not going to risk my life, your life, other peoples lives, or my car gambling on whether or not you will react in time – or on how you will react
- …and the examiner will view it in exactly the same way
It seems that the original comments about independent driving stem from a discussion on another forum, where someone thrice removed from an alleged situation had heard a story from the parents of a test candidate who had been failed for being in the wrong lane at a roundabout. The hearsay reports that the candidate had been asked to take the second exit on a roundabout as part of the independent drive, but he signalled and positioned as if to take the first. He had insisted to his parents that he was going to take the first exit, and the parents had contacted this thrice-removed ADI, who was also a family member. As you’d expect, the usual suspects have stacked up against the examiner, even though all of them are even further removed from being associated with any reliable facts. Several have even gone so far as to state categorically that it “shouldn’t have been a fail”. No one who is so far away from knowing the full story can possibly make such an assertion and be taken seriously.
In my own example from above, if you just say that I used the dual controls but the pupil insisted she was going to stop, it sounds like I was somehow in the wrong. It is only when you have the full facts that anything like the true situation starts to emerge. My pupil can argue all she likes, but she was going too fast and could easily have hit another vehicle, so the question over whether or not she’d have braked and given us both whiplash into the bargain becomes moot.
There is every likelihood that the failed test candidate in the forum example was acting irrationally enough for the examiner to decide not to risk it developing any further. That is quite probably why he took action, and correctly so. If nothing else, those people who are thrice removed from the events should certainly consider it instead of just trying to trash the DVSA.
Independent driving is about showing that you can drive a car safely without being prompted to use MSM with frequent directions all the time – something a learner will have to be able to do the moment they pass their test. Being tested this way is better than not being tested at all, which the old version of the test was guilty of.