I was on a lesson with a pupil today who has his test coming up early next year. We were just about to start heading home, when I asked him if he’d ever driven through a McDonalds Drive Thru before. He hadn’t.
So I said “look, almost the first thing you’re going to do when you pass is go through one. Let’s try it now – my treat, but no Big Mac Meal or anything”.
He replied “yeah, you’re probably right. My mates will want me to go through one”.
It was interesting to see how he controlled the car (nervously), and how the rules of driving seemed to vapourise when negotiating the chicanes and hairpins of a typical British McDonalds car park during Christmas Week and The Sales at the big retail park we went into.
It was good experience for him, because the next time he does it he’s likely to have a car full of mates with him. Going to McDonalds’ drive thru is a rite of passage, no less important than getting their licences.
We pulled up somewhere close by to eat (I’d chosen the location because we could do a turn in the road after we’d finished) and he remembered the last time I’d taken him there some months ago. The previous night back then had been Prat Night, with all the boy racers and their pratmobiles doing donuts, racing each other, and eating McDonalds for the sole purpose of discarding the wrappings outside the car in the car parks of the industrial units around there. The morning we went, the place was an absolute pig-sty – it was about 20cm deep in McDonalds cartons from one end to the other (the council were there shovelling it up). Since then, they’ve put speed bumps in and the police sometimes close roads in the industrial areas off when they get wind of a Prat-rally being organised.
He said “now we’re just the same as those people who’d been here when we came last time”. I laughed – he had a slight point, although I took the wrappers home and disposed of them there.
But the reason I even mentioned this – and his excellent “memory” of something which had happened ages ago – was an incident that had occurred earlier in the session. I mean, he had remembered all the litter from the Pratfest I’d told him about that had taken place the night before months ago, but when he approached a crossroads with markings identical to those I’ve shown in the diagram here, he didn’t even remember what planet he was on!
Bearing in mind he’s a good driver and should pass his test easily… he just kept his line past some parked cars and ended up straight in the right-turn lane!
I sometimes want to scream when they do this! They know exactly what to do. They don’t do it wrong every time – 99 times out of 100 they do it perfectly. But every now and then their minds just go to sleep and they don’t do anything at all. It’s just something that happens – as it does with 90% of the driving population!
But it’s all part of the fun of being an instructor.