Honestly, I’m not looking for these stories – they just fall into my lap.
I was on a lesson with a pupil this afternoon, and we were in a car park practising bay parking. I was prompting her through it, and when we came to straighten up inside the bay I leaned forward to look at the line in the wing mirror to check that we were parallel.
Now, the pupil is quite small – not tiny, but just a bit on the short side – and she has the seat quite a long way forward, and the back rake angle at about 90°. But even so, I nearly gave myself a hernia leaning forward to see anything other than the side of the car in the nearside mirror. I then noticed that I could see the side of the car in the offside mirror from where I was in the passenger seat!
I opened the window and put my finger tip on the end of the door handle (I get them to adjust the mirror to the same position every time we have a lesson so that they can see the same things in it, and the position I recommend is the one that shows the maximum side-rear view).
Me: [finger on door handle] Can you see my fingertip in the bottom right corner of the mirror [point to bottom right corner]
She: Umm… no.
Me: But what have we… well, adjust it so that you can. Remember, you want to see my finger nail here [point to bottom right corner again] – and not below it.
She: [mirror goes up-down-left-right-up-down-up-right-left… etc. Eventually it stops]
Me: Have you done it?
She: Yes.
Me: So you can see my finger nail in this corner of the mirror? [point to bottom right hand corner, then put my finger on the door handle]
She: No.
Me: [put head in hands]
She: [giggles]
Me: Adjust it so that you can see my finger nail, and not below my finger nail.
[We eventually confirm that that’s exactly where it is, and I can now see the road without dislocating my pelvis]
Me: Now do the other one. I’m not getting out to put my finger on the door handle, so adjust it so you can see the same part of the handle you can on this side.
[I notice the sweeping panorama that unfolds as the mirror coasts along the length of the car and out into the road where it should be]
Me: Just out of curiosity, how much of the car could you see where you had the mirrors before?
She: Quite a lot.
Me: When I have said to check your mirrors, what exactly could you see?
She: Ummm… [giggles]
[We get to the end of the lesson and finish the lesson summary]
Me: Can you adjust that mirror inwards to where you had it before – I want to see what you could see when I get in that seat.
[I watch the sweeping panorama of her street get sucked into the black void of the side of the car]
Me: This is going straight on my blog. You do realise that, don’t you?
You’ve got to bear in mind that we’ve been through mirror setting before, and how important it is for normal driving and certain manoeuvres (the way I teach them). And she doesn’t usually set them like this.
When I got in to drive away, about 90% of the mirror was filled with the side of the car!
Sometimes, you couldn’t make it up.