Although I’ve tended to move away from this topic over the years, in the past – fired by the comments of imbeciles on web forums which no longer exist – I’ve often made the point that many ADIs are complete prats in almost everything they do.
Back in the days when the three-point-turn (aka turn in the road) and corner reverse were part of the driving test, the behaviour of other ADIs was appalling when you wanted to practice.
For example. Near me, there is an industrial estate, which is very quiet on evenings and at weekends. With experienced pupils, I would have used any relatively quiet corner or road anywhere in the city to do the reverse corner exercise, but with new pupils it was better to have a road with little traffic to worry about. Industrial estates were good places for that reason.
If we arrived and someone else was using the corner, I’d tell my pupil to drive on, and we would either use another corner, or do something else instead. That’s because ever since I became an instructor, I have always made it a point not to interfere with other instructors or their pupils. Unfortunately, for reasons I have never fathomed, other ADIs seem to go out of their way to inconvenience everyone. I’m not sure if it is because they are simply stupid and unaware, or if they are doing it on purpose because they are stupid in a different way.
In the past, I have had them queuing up behind me waiting to use a corner (for the reverse exercise), and on more than one occasion one of them moved in when we were part way round. In those cases, they moved off when I got out and told them we were using the corner.
It was the same with the turn in the road exercise. Again, there is an industrial estate which is quiet on weekends. These days, it has parked vans on it, which are ideal for parallel park practice, but some years ago it would be deserted – especially on Sundays. One of the roads was about half a mile long, which was useful for the turn in the road manoeuvre. And yet I can recall at least half a dozen instances where we had driven in and stopped, only to have another driving school car turn up and stop right behind us to do the same manoeuvre, preventing us from moving while they did it. And it didn’t matter if we’d stopped at the beginning, middle, or end of the road – wherever we stopped, they would come close behind. On another occasion, I’d pulled my pupil over on a narrow road in Bramcote to discuss something, only for another instructor to come from the opposite direction and stop directly opposite, creating a bottleneck for other traffic. Yet the road was otherwise empty of parked vehicles.
This is why I refuse to have anything to do with other instructors. Most of them are complete pillocks.
Another time, I was in a small car park on an industrial estate one weekend. It has nine parking spaces one side, and five the other. As I intimated earlier, if someone is using it (or if any of the bays are occupied by employees or boy racers eating their McDonalds), I give it a wide berth and go somewhere else. It is only big enough for one learner to practice at a time – if anyone else goes in, only one of you can move, and if employees are already parked there you’re likely to get complaints. But one time, another instructor did come in while I was practising with a learner, blocking us completely. He left after I had a quiet word.
There’s a similar problem at the Colwick Test Centre. They have repeatedly asked instructors not to use the centre car park unless they have a test, but as I said, most instructors are pillocks. The lesser pillocks will queue outside the centre, and then drive in en masse once all the tests have gone out to practice bay parking. But several – and it is a large several – go in at test times and get in the way.
Last year, one of my pupils was heading out of the compound on his test. One of these pillocks was waiting to come in, and his pupil had stopped wide at the give way line, which resulted in my pupil kerbing the car. I saw it happen as I was walking down to the exit myself. When they got back, the examiner was spitting feathers and swearing. She said to my pupil:
I’ve told that idiot more than once not to come in when tests are going out, but he keeps doing it. You went on to the kerb and I’m supposed to fail you for that – you’ve passed, by the way – but he was blocking the road. I want his registration number so I can do something about it…
Driving examiner
At that point, I told her my dashcam would have caught it and I’d be more than happy to provide it. She gave me her office phone number, and I happily did provide her with the information an hour later.
A fortnight ago, I went in for a test ten minutes before our time (as the test centre requests). We stopped at the top of the drive to allow two other school cars to reverse into bays. I said to my pupil at the time that this was going to be like watching paint dry, and it was. But it turned out that one of them wasn’t there for a test – it was practising in the car park. Some stupid cow in a Mercedes. My pupil didn’t even have time to go to the loo by the time we finally got in (but the examiner was happy to wait a moment while she did – she passed).
That’s the beauty of technology. Years ago, it was just a visual thing, and I used to write down the registration numbers of anyone behaving like a prat and put an article on the blog. Nowadays, you can capture it in glorious 4K video, and record sound and video using bodycams. Better still, Nottinghamshire Police now accept online dashcam footage, and I’m currently running at 26 submissions out of 30 where they have told me they will be taking further action. Technology also came in handy recently.
A few weeks ago, I went into the Toton Park and Ride with a pupil to do bay parking with her for the first time. The entire far side of the P+R was empty, except for three parked vehicles dotted around, and one learner doing the bay park (right in the main driveway (sigh)). I mean, we’re talking about 250+ empty parking bays, across nine separate blocks. We detoured so as to leave that learner alone, and went into one of the corner blocks. All caught on dashcam, you understand (that’s a screen capture at the top from my dashcam on the day in question).
Anyway, I’m conducting the lesson in my usual way. I firstly do the manoeuvre using my dual controls and ask them how I managed to get into the bay. Then I do it again, showing them the mechanics of what we just discussed. Then I ask them to try it with me talking them through it. It was just as my pupil began to try it herself for the first time that she became distracted. Another school car had turned up right behind us and was waiting. I told her to ignore him and carry on, but she isn’t ready for that yet, so I had to get involved to get her out of the way.
Once we’d reversed in, I expected the other learner to drive past – some idiot instructors (and most uninsured parents) use the P+R as an enclosed driving circuit – but he stopped directly in front of us. Then he moved forward slightly to position. Incredibly, the imbecile was planning to reverse bay park next to us! The whole damned car park was empty, but he blocked us in to do the manoeuvre right next to us!
I got out and waved at him. He rolled down his window. I said:
The whole car park is empty [the dashcam shows I gestured to the empty expanse], but you’ve now blocked us in. She’s doing the bay park for the first time, and now we can’t move. You could have gone anywhere, but you came here, right next to us. Why?
He looked at me, and I continued:
Look, I’m not being rude or anything, but… come on!
The video shows him wave in acknowledgement, and me give the thumbs up. All caught by my dashcam in crystal clear 4K broadcast quality video – his registration number, vehicle type, and school name. But no audio, of course.
That should have been the end of it, with him having learned an important lesson in etiquette and common sense, but a couple of days later I got a call telling me someone had complained and that I had used offensive language. But I had an ace up my sleeve. You see, as well as a very high resolution dashcam, I also have a bodycam. It’s about the size of a thick USB stick, so it is very discreet when clipped to my shirt. I don’t have it recording video (there’s no need) – but I do have it recording audio on loop.
And that turned out to be very useful in this case when dealing with someone who was a liar as well as a prat.
I’ve mentioned many times in the past that driving instructors are nothing special, even if they think they are. Many of them are just as stupid as the general public. This one certainly was – unless he was just so clueless that this somehow made sense to him.
My advice to anyone thinking of becoming an instructor – and to anyone who already is one – is to use some bloody common sense and keep away from other learners. If someone is using ‘your’ special place, tough. Go somewhere else, like I do. You can easily find somewhere else to practice unless you are totally clueless. And if you are one of those who is afflicted by the need to always cluster around others, get treatment for it.
If you’re going to take them on to main roads, make them drive at least close to the speed limit – it’s better for them and for everyone else. If they can’t, they shouldn’t be there. On the first lesson with a new pupil, when going through what each pedal does, I say to mine when discussing the accelerator:
I’ll usually call it the gas pedal, because it’s quicker to say. ‘More gas’ means press it harder, ‘less gas’ means press it less. ‘Off the gas’ means take your foot away from it. And my favourite is ‘gas, gas, gas, gas, gas’ when I want you to go faster – I’ll use that a lot to start with once we get on the big roads, because going slow annoys other drivers, and that means you’ll be under pressure if they overtake or start tooting at you.
And stay out of the damned test centre unless you’re going to a test. You have to be a complete idiot to want to practice there and risk messing up other people’s tests.