When you are a driving instructor, one of the big problems you have to try and overcome with many of your pupils is their lack of awareness of what is around them. We teach them to look in the mirrors, but do they actually see what is in them? Unfortunately, they often do not, and you have to develop this basic skill to the best of your ability.
In learners, lack of awareness can partly manifest itself as changing lanes without looking (especially on roundabouts), or pulling out in front of traffic that is obviously coming straight at you (again, especially on roundabouts). For these reasons, an instructor has to be fully focused at all times to prevent dangerous bad decisions.
But passing the driving test is absolutely no guarantee that someone is going to drive safely or legally. It is definitely no guarantee that a new driver has the required awareness of what is going on around them – particularly behind them.
I saw two incidents today which illustrate this. The first was in Ruddington village, where the main street is a notorious bottleneck, especially where someone parks a 4×4 on yellow lines near to the Post Office, and also outside Grices Electrical – where parking on one side forces the road to a single lane. If traffic heading into Ruddington outside Grices keeps coming through (and it doesn’t have right of way since the parking is on its side), then the build up of traffic trying to get out blocks the road outside the Post Office, and everyone gets gridlocked. And this is exactly what happened today when some idiot outside Grices kept flashing traffic through, oblivious to the chaos forming behind them.
The second incident was tonight, when I was going to pick up my last pupil for a 7pm lesson. Traffic was heavy because of at least two problems on major roads out of the city, and much of it was taking a detour along Bath Street towards the A52 at Trent Bridge. As a result, traffic was at a standstill down Bath Street and on to Huntingdon Street. Now, there is a small roundabout near Huntingdon Street and traffic was already backed up on to that – preventing vehicles going the other way from getting into St Anns. But this didn’t stop a silver VW Polo ( reg no. W331 OCH ) flashing another car on to the roundabout to block it, when that other car couldn’t go anywhere anyway – and neither could the Polo and those behind it now that the roundabout was blocked!
How these people manage to get their licences is beyond me. Goodness knows how they fare in normal life if they are as stupid as they seem to be behind the wheel!