Someone sent this to me recently, and I thought I’d tidy it up, add a few bits, and reproduce it here. It’s in the form of an open letter to a problem pupil. To be honest, I think it’s a composite of various pupils, but I think most of us can relate to at least part of it (note: I believe that the original came from somewhere around London and the Home Counties).
Dear xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
You recently accused me of shouting at you on a lesson when your test was only ONE WEEK away. I listened to you, and decided that the written word might convey my sentiments more diplomatically than what I really wanted to say to your face at the time.
You came to me barely EIGHT WEEKS ago. You told me on the telephone that you could already drive, and had been doing so on a full licence in your home country in Africa – and more recently in Europe – for “many years”. Your plan was to “learn the test routes” and the British roads.
On our first lesson you could barely move the car without either stalling it, or lurching off with a wheel spin. Each time you stopped, the contents of the rear seat transferred themselves to the front. Indeed, stopping didn’t initially appear to be a problem for you, as you did it every time you saw another car moving even vaguely towards us, in the middle of junctions and roundabouts where we had clear right of way, and in sundry other situations. However, once we moved to busier roads it was apparent that your stopping skills were less reliable around pedestrian crossings and red lights. At least once on each of the FIVE LESSONS you have had during our time together I have had to stop the car for you either to prevent us hitting a pedestrian or in order to comply with UK Law regarding red lights. Your clutch control has improved, but even on our most recent lesson you once again found moving away from your house problematic. The ache in my arm by the end reminded me that I had spent more time controlling the steering from my side than you had from yours. If I suggest that you use the handbrake when we are stopped, you invariably forget about it and try to move off with it engaged. Conversely, if I let you do it your way, we invariably roll back – and then either stall or generate a wheel spin as you react to the roll. For all practical purposes, you are a beginner in all aspects of driving in the UK.
Your speed control is such that I often have to remind you of the speed limit. You frequently do not see road signs at all (you don’t know what many of them mean), and your ability to follow and/or interpret direction signs is non-existent based on the few times I have asked you to follow the signs to somewhere.
You were – and remain – unable to complete any of the standard manoeuvres to anywhere near an acceptable standard. The time available to practice these has been reduced by your issues with basic car control, roundabouts, and road junctions, and the need to address these. On our most recent lesson, and having only done it once before with me, I asked you if you remembered how to reverse around a corner. You furnished me with the answer which is common among your countrymen, who would apparently prefer to demonstrate that they can’t do something instead of just admitting to it up front, and gave me an emphatic “yes”. I expressed surprise, but you were adamant. You then proceeded to do exactly what you did on the first lesson before I had shown you how to do it properly, and moved off without even a glimmer of a safety check. By the time I stopped you we were about to mount the kerb on the opposite side of the road, although you were gazing fixedly at something in the nearside mirror (it certainly wasn’t our nearside kerb).
You are unable to adhere to any sort of lane discipline, and you frequently drive as though there are no road markings at all. Your solution to not knowing where to position the car is to put it “somewhere in the middle”. Having said that, we have had to spend a significant amount of time recently going over two particular roundabouts repeatedly, because no matter how many times you negotiate them, and no matter how many times I get you to tell me you’re going “straight ahead” and you need to be in the lane with the “straight arrow”, as soon as we get there you jiggle the steering and go into the lane with the “left turn” arrow and we end up going left. All this happens when you panic (and especially when the word “roundabout” is mentioned), but you refused to acknowledge that you are in any way “nervous” or “panicked” until the most recent lesson when you let it slip out.
Your uncertainty over your road position in these situations means that even if you appear to be handling a particular junction or roundabout correctly, there is a high probability that as we approach it more closely you will suddenly attempt to fling the car into another lane with no prior mirror checks or signals. Indeed, this has even happened on straight roads, and without warning, when new lanes have appeared in front of us. I am constantly saying “watch the kerb” or grabbing the steering wheel to prevent us mounting the pavement or veering into another road user (which is why my arm aches by the end of our lessons).
Unfortunately, and in spite of what I have mentioned above, from the first moment you got in my car on that initial lesson all you have wanted to do was book your test. You had made it clear you were poorly paid and couldn’t afford many lessons. I explained that being test-ready was about being able to drive, not about taking the smallest number of lessons possible, but my experience in these matters told me you were not listening and just wanted to take a test as soon as you could get one (you would happily have done one that afternoon if you’d have had the chance). I warned you that tests were booking 18 weeks out, but you said that that was too far away. I explained that if you were test-ready we could look for cancellations and 18 weeks would be fine for now.
On our second lesson, you still had not booked a test. Then you told me that one of your friends had informed you that test centre “X” was “easier” than all the others in the county (this was based on the sole criterion that your friend had passed there). I explained that this was factually incorrect. I also pointed out that I didn’t normally cover that test centre as it was further away, and that I wasn’t completely familiar with the roads around it. I advised you to ignore your friend and to book your test at one of the several centres I DID cover (I even explained that one of them had the ACTUAL highest pass rate in the county) . These were closer and we had already driven around some of the typical roads.
You ignored me and booked your test at test centre “X” – because you had come across a cancellation test date that was less than SIX WEEKS away. You then cancelled a lesson and I didn’t see you for more than two weeks. This explains why, having been with me for EIGHT WEEKS, and with only ONE WEEK to go to your test, you have only taken FIVE lessons.
During our lessons your mobile phone chirps merrily away in your pocket. On the most recent one I made you silence it, because it was just too distracting. However, in spite of apparently being at the hub of the technological universe, you steadfastly refuse to answer any of MY texts – and I’m thinking especially of the ones where I was trying to clarify the actual date and time of your test for my diary. I only obtained this information from you on the THIRD lesson, and even then you had to look it up from the DVSA email on your phone. This suggests that you don’t give a damn about MY business and are only interested in what YOU want.
On that third lesson I took you out to the areas covered by test centre “X”, which is very busy. Even though you refused to admit it, you were terrified of every roundabout and every junction. You later claimed that it was because you were on “unfamiliar roads” – I refrained from pointing out that it was YOUR choice to book your test over there, though to be fair to you ALL roads are “unfamiliar” as far as the problems we are encountering go.
Fixing your driving would have been fairly straightforward over 18 weeks. Fixing it over 6 weeks, then losing 2 weeks when you stopped lessons, and concurrent with all this realising the depth of your problems, made it pretty much impossible. On our most recent lesson, I believe that it was my repeated intervention for the reasons mentioned above (most notably, where you AGAIN turned left at one of the roundabouts after telling me clearly what you had seen, what lane you needed, and which exit you should take), combined with your own dawning realisation that there just might be a problem, which led to your accusation that I was “shouting” at you. You also accused me of “not teaching” you. You actually said – with only ONE WEEK to go before your test – that “you should be telling me what to do so I can learn”.
Just for once, and before my blood boils off completely, you will consider MY concerns and do as you are told.
You ARE NOT taking your test next week. You WILL cancel it and move it back. A LONG WAY back. If you don’t like it, you can find another instructor.
I have been “telling you what to do” since the first lesson – and that is part of the problem. I should not be having to “tell you” anything this close to your test, particularly as you keep claiming to “be able to drive”. I have tried to let you drive independently and you can’t. Even a simple left turn can blow up into the most convoluted disaster imaginable if I don’t tell you exactly what to do, and you have learned almost nothing from these instances. You are not as good a driver as you seem to believe, and you are not a particularly fast learner. As I say, I can fix you in 18 weeks, but definitely not within the time frame you have in mind.
When the examiner gets in the car with you, you are ON YOUR OWN. If he has to tell you what to do, grab the wheel, use the brakes, etc. then you WILL fail.
My livelihood depends on retaining my licence to teach. People like you who only want to use my car for a driving test, could easily interfere with that. I have tried to get you ready for your test and – as a result of your complete and utter selfishness in booking a cancellation slot – have failed. Therefore you ARE NOT using my car next week.
Personally, I’ve lost count of the number of poorly-paid overseas pupils I’ve had who reckon they can drive and only want to go to test. Ones who do it in their own cars are the bane of DVSA examiners, as they take test after test with no proper lessons in between. Many are just dangerous, and the frightening thing is that if the examiner doesn’t see anything that the system says he should award a serious fault for, he has to pass that candidate.
I believe that the proposed changes to the driving test – while welcomed by certain inexperienced and naïve instructors – will just make the situation worse. We need a test which can weed out as many bad drivers as possible – not one which helps them pass, which is precisely what the proposed new test will do.