I’ve taken on a few new pupils recently, all of them referrals from one who had recently passed. All of them had had previous driving lessons with other instructors.
The first was a girl who had been let down on test day by her instructor and she had (at the point I took her on) lost her money. The large company the ADI worked for had initially said it was nothing to do with them, but they have since backed down and refunded her (which they should have done as soon as she complained).
On her first lesson, she told me she wasn’t very good at parallel parking. I got her to try it for me and it was the bloody one-turn-this-way-one-turn-that-way-and-when-the-target-car’s-light-cluster-lines-up-in-Sagittarius-with-the-moon-rising-turn-one-turn-again-keep-moving-all-the-time rigmarole, which wasn’t helped by the fact I was using a Transit van as the target vehicle, and that stupid method relies on looking diagonally through the target (it’s even better if they try it behind an HGV).
I asked if she’d mind me showing her a method which works every time, and she jumped at the chance. I ran through it with her once, then talked her through a try by herself, and she got it in first time.
I explained that the method she’d been taught could only get close to being right every time if the target car was always a standard saloon and was parked correctly itself. If it was away from the kerb, then she’d finish away from the kerb. If the target car was parked at an angle, she would either finish further from the kerb, or possibly hit it. And since the angle her car moved to was dependent on the target having a short rectangular footprint (set by looking through it diagonally), using anything with a longer footprint – like a stretch limo, a van, or a lorry – reduced the angle too much and resulted in finishing further from the kerb.
I pointed out that the method I had just shown her didn’t give a damn about the target car (other than not hitting it) and used the kerb as the primary reference instead of the target car’s light clusters.
She’d only had one lesson with me, and immediately referred a friend. This one had done over 20 hours of lessons, but – and I checked this repeatedly to verify it, and it is sadly absolutely true – had never done a single roundabout, not been off a straight industrial road, and had not done any of the manoeuvres. She felt she wasn’t getting anywhere.
I got her to drive from her home, around several roundabouts, down the new Gedling Access Road (with roundabouts), through Burton Joyce and Stoke Bardolph, and finally to somewhere we could do a parallel park. Along the way, I’d noticed she was leaving a huge gap between herself and the cars in front when we stopped at traffic lights. After the first few times, I said ‘you’ve been taught ‘tyres and tarmac’ haven’t you?’ She had, so I explained how that doesn’t work in most cars, invariably leads to a four-metre gap that other cars might try to get into, and which means fewer cars get through the lights if they have short cycles. I showed her a better way to determine where to stop, where she had enough space to get out if the car in front broke down, was far enough back so it wouldn’t hit her if it rolled back a little and would ensure she didn’t frustrate drivers behind.
It’s funny, but I ditched TAT (tyres and tarmac) within weeks of qualifying, because I saw that it didn’t work. I just can’t understand why other instructors still teach it when they can see it is wrong for themselves.
Once we got to a suitable location, I showed her how to parallel park, then talked her through doing it herself, then once more with me saying less. She got it in first time both times.
Then I have another pupil who had also been taught that same ridiculous parallel parking method outlined above. I asked him do it for me three times using different cars. He got in the first time, was a bit wider the second, and was nearly a metre away from the kerb the third time (no observations at all in any of them). I was a bit sneaky with the third car, because the kerb has a very slight bend. The third was very wide simply because that damned method is always in relation to the target car. And all three attempts were further back than I was happy with (and all with no observations, because it was done in a continuous movement).
I explained that on his test he pretty much has one chance to get it right if he is asked to do this manoeuvre and obviously, if he was as wide as on that third attempt, he would fail. I asked if he’d mind me showing him a method that works every time, which uses the kerb as a reference point and not the target car, as his method did. He was happy with that.
I just talked him through it, and he got it in three times running – about 15cm from the kerb each time.
Then, a few months ago, I took on another referred pupil who had been repeatedly let down by her previous instructor – brought to head by the fact she had her test booked, but her instructor now said she couldn’t take her. Actually, as an aside, I took on another quickly afterwards – they were both friends learning with that same instructor, but because they were Muslims, they had specifically chosen a female instructor to begin with.
The first pupil could drive, but I told her on the first lesson with me she was checking her mirrors far too much. She was like one of those nodding dogs people have on the rear parcel shelf, routinely going through all three mirrors. On the second lesson, we were going around a gentle bend and I had to grab the wheel as she strayed towards oncoming traffic. She’d gone for a 3-mirror check when she should have been steering.
I pulled her over and said I’d mentioned she was checking too often last time, but what just happened was precisely why it was a very bad idea, and she had got to stop it. She agreed, and then told me her previous instructor had told her to check her mirrors every three seconds. I queried that, but that was what she believed she’d been told. I said, ‘you’re spending more time looking behind than you are in front! Does that make any sense to you?’ She agreed it didn’t. And she passed first time.
Every time I take someone on with previous experience, they seem to have been taught something as if it were chiselled on one of the tablets given to Moses, and yet it is utterly wrong or unworkable.