One of my pupils gave me a laugh the other day. She’s a good driver (passed her test a while ago, but not with me), and she’s doing a Pass Plus course with me at the moment.
What A Detour
One of the routes I use when doing Pass Plus is down the M1 to Leicester Forest East Services (J21), then back up to J23, through Loughborough, then back to Nottingham via the A60 and some unclassified rural roads. When we were in Loughborough, she asked “Are we anywhere near Derby? “. Then a little later when we were in Keyworth, she asked “Are we near Colwick? “
OK. I suppose it depends how you define the word near. Loughborough is near Derby (20 miles) – as long as you work on the basis that the moon is a long way away, and compare other distances with that. And Keyworth definitely is quite near Colwick (10 miles) – certainly when compared with the Loughborough/Derby thing.
But while we were talking about that she told me what had happened when she and her boyfriend had set out to go to the Meadowhall Shopping Centre from Nottingham.
You can see from the map on the left that Meadowhall (the red dot) is north of Nottingham. About 41 miles north, to be a little more precise.
Apparently, after some time they found themselves at Watford Gap Services (the blue dot). Watford Gap is 51 miles south of Nottingham.
I told her that that was definitely going on my List Of Things To Tell Pupils in future. Like I said, she’s a good driver – but simple navigation (or lack thereof) is a real problem for many new drivers.
But it does probably highlight why the DSA plan to introduce an independent driving section to the test from October 2010 is a very good idea – only opposed by fossils who are just anti-DSA, no matter what.
I’ve already mentioned one of my current learners, who insisted she couldn’t drive and look at the signs as well. Although we fixed that, if we hadn’t have done then she would have gone out on her own after passing still with the same inability to navigate in the most basic of ways.
Merging
And it’s the same with a lot of others. I was explaining to one today (not that far off test standard) that when he sees a road sign it has to speak to him in words. We were joining a dual carriageway from a slip road, and the merging sign was clearly there warning of the merge – but he didn’t respond to it, even though he saw it.
And it was the same a few miles later when we came to a roundabout. I asked him to turn right, 3rd exit (and stressed the road name so he could follow the signs and road markings). Apart from the big roundabout sign there were lane signs telling you which lane to use – but again, he just didn’t respond.
In fact, I often find that those doing Pass Plus don’t actually know what many road signs mean. Once they pass their Theory Test many of them just seem to forget the Highway Code completely.
It would certainly explain the standard of driving you see on the roads each day.