I was on a lesson yesterday, and while we were in the middle of reversing around a corner a 4×4 pulled up a little ahead of us and a woman (let’s call her Mrs X) got out and came around my side. I smiled, wound the window down, and said “hello there”.
She wasn’t rude or anything, but she was obviously incensed by what she then explained to me (and I phoned her earlier today to get the details more accurately).
Last week, during the worst of the snow, a learner car – driven by a learner – had skidded into the wall outside her house (which is on a slight bend) and done some considerable damage to it. From what I saw yesterday it will have to be partially rebuilt, and the bricks are chipped – suggesting that some considerable force was involved. The learner car was so badly damaged that it had to be towed away.
During the same period another learner car had skidded into the pavement on the opposite side to Mrs X’s house. In the conversations I have had with her, she makes the very valid point that her children could have been outside playing in the snow. She also makes it clear that she doesn’t have any real problem with learners, even though they do get a lot of them on her street. Her main concern is that they were out in such treacherous conditions, when even qualified drivers were unable to handle them.
I must make it clear that I do not agree with that last comment. Not completely, anyway.
Mrs X herself agreed that learners need to experience icy conditions, but as I say her main concern was the seriousness of the conditions – particularly on her road. The road is on an extremely gentle slope and, as anyone with any experience on snow will understand, that means stopping distances increase dramatically if you get into a skid, and skids are correspondingly much more likely. Before it started to melt, the surface on many roads was kerb-to-kerb packed ice. They were as close to skating rink surfaces you could get without actually going to the Nottingham Arena! This is how it was on Mrs X’s completely un-gritted road.
The area where Mrs X’s house is situated used to be the subject of one of the “Please avoid…” notices pinned up on the now-closed West Bridgford Test Centre noticeboard. It’s quiet and exclusive – but it’s main attraction to instructors is:
- it has three perfect corners for reversing
- it is less than ½ mile from where the test centre used to be
- instructors have always gone there
- …and nothing else
On the negative side:
- it isn’t quiet anymore
- it isn’t very big
- it’s used as a rat run by the mummies and daddies picking up and dropping off their kids from the private school up the road
- it’s used as a rat run during rush hour
- you get a lot of builders’ vans and skips down there
- the residents detest learners to the point of deliberately disrupting manoeuvres
- the roads are the absolute minimum width to do a turn in the road
- unless you just drive in a circle it links to much busier roads
In short, the only reason most instructors use it is because they always have, or because someone else told them about it, and because they haven’t got the intelligence, instructing skills, or courage to go elsewhere. You often see the idiots asking on forums “where are there any nursery routes in [enter place name].”
You don’t need “nursery” routes. You just find somewhere relatively quiet and do your job!
I avoid the place whenever I can. I go there maybe once a week or so, just to rotate my time with all the other places I go to, and usually at night when all the other instructors are home watching Corrie. I never use it if I see another instructor car – I tell my pupil to drive on. You see, I plan my lessons as a circuit: we drive from the pupil’s house and travel a route which takes us via various places where we can do manoeuvres or whatever it is we’re practising. I’m not restricted to just ONE place for the left reverse, and ONE place for the turn in the road. But many other instructors really are that constrained.
Yesterday was one of those days where this area was completely free of any other school cars as we passed through during the day. So, we’d just pulled over to do the left reverse when another learner appeared behind us and stopped (as usual, waiting for the corner). I think he then decided not to wait and moved to the next corner. Finally, an idiot in a local franchise car stopped about four car lengths in front of us to do a turn in the road. This is when Mrs X came around the corner on her way home, being blocked by the clown doing the turn in the road.
You can easily imagine her feelings when she drove in and saw this lot going on. And believe me when I say that this is quiet compared to what it can be like down there sometimes: 10 or more cars driving in a circle waiting to use corners (or trying to steal them from each other) is common.
To make matters worse, another car was trying to do a turn in the road a few metres from her house, and it’s wheels were spinning dramatically on the ice (the driver had it all wrong). We all assumed this was another learner, but it turned out to be someone from another house. Even so, it just exacerbated the situation.
While I was politely dealing with Mrs X, her passenger was talking to the local franchise car instructor and – from what I was later told – got a torrent of abuse. Now, I don’t know what the passenger said, but there is still no excuse for an instructor to abuse residents like this.
I explained to Mrs X that I fully sympathised with her and agreed with most of what she said. I said that my pupil would finish that corner exercise and be moving on anyway, which we did. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the local franchise instructor deliberately stayed there for his entire lesson – reading the attitudes of some “professionals” on the forums when this situation crops up suggests that doing just this sort of petty thing is common.
Mrs X said she was going to contact the Police about the matter, but they have informed her that it is a public road and there is nothing they can do. She has thanked me for being reasonable and understanding over it.
The bottom line to all this is that a lot of driving instructors are simply stupid. You see the glossy ads saying “become an instructor – no qualifications needed“. Well, that attracts all sorts looking to make a quick buck. It would be that kind of person who was allowing their pupil to drive at such a ridiculously high speed on sheet ice, down a gradient, coming up to a bend, that the car was totalled and a wall was seriously damaged. And it would be that kind of person who was allowing their pupil to drive so fast in the opposite direction that they slammed into a kerb on the same bend.
In both of these examples, the instructors in question obviously did not have even the slightest consideration for pedestrians or children who might have been on the pavement. They also didn’t have a clue how to instruct in such conditions (suggesting their own driving skills were also somewhat lacking in similar conditions). Does that mean they are “fit and proper” – one of the main criteria for being on the approved register?
Last week, SOME pupils shouldn’t have been out at all, and NO pupils should have been on SOME roads at any time. I’d even go so far as to say that at certain times during last week NO pupils should have been out – anywhere – AT ALL.
If instructors ignore all that for the sake of money, then you could also add that some instructors SHOULDN’T BE instructors at all.
The two specimens mentioned above certainly raise certain questions, don’t they?.