Well done to NM for passing first time with just one driver fault this afternoon. It was also great that the examiner commented ‘it was a nice drive’ to me as he got out of the car – makes you feel like you did something right.
This was cemented later on when my current problem pupil finally managed to do the reverse round a corner unaided for the first time in 29 lessons of trying! That must be equivalent to something like 150 attempts over the 2½ years she’s been learning with me (she hasn’t been taking lessons all that time, and not always every week when she is).
I had tried almost everything I could think of to stop her turning the wheel randomly in response to the kerb moving towards or away from the car. And she did the same thing again today on the first two tries:
- kerb moves in – steer away from it
- kerb moves in a bit more – steer away from it
- kerb moves in a bit more – steer towards it!
I did something with some pens to demonstrate how illogical her reactions were, not thinking I’d done anything more than what I’ve done a hundred times before. When she got it right, she said:
She: You know what did it?
Me: No. What?
She: [points to pens] That!
It just goes to show that the real challenge in this job is finding the right buttons to press.