This came in on the news feed (the story is now truncated, as it happened a long time ago if you’re reading it now). Richard Crookes, 19, was more than twice the legal limit, wasn’t wearing a seat belt, and had never taken a driving lesson in his life.
He crashed the black Renault Clio he was driving (so add “no insurance” and any number of other related offences to the list) and was killed. His passenger sustained injuries but recovered. Evidence from the passenger suggests speeding was also involved:
“It was a terrifying journey and I asked him to stop and slow down,” he told the inquest.
His mother confirmed at the inquest that he didn’t even have a provisional driving licence!
Recording a verdict of accidental death, coroner Paul Kelly said: “The journey was uninsured and Richard Crookes was unfit to drive due to the alcohol consumed.
“He drove at excess speed and lost control, leaving the side of the A161.
“Richard Crookes was not wearing a seatbelt and sustained injuries not sustainable with life.
“It is a very sad and tragic waste of a young life.”
My view is less sympathetic. It was lucky he didn’t kill anyone else. Fortunately, there’s now no chance of him ever doing so. Sometimes, Higher Justice turns up an ace.
This is an old post. I ought to point out that I tried to use SLRHut again one time, and was far from impressed. They don’t actually do pure online ordering – your order gets held until you phone them, and their phone line is poorly manned. The only reason they want to talk to you is to hard sell a whole pile of extra crap.
As I mentioned in that recent Rush article, I have bought a new camera. I’d done my research and I knew exactly which one I wanted – the Panasonic Lumix FZ200. But it wasn’t cheap. Even now, Amazon sells it for £400, but when I first started looking it was anywhere between £400-£500 (indeed, currently John Lewis sells it for £440, Panasonic for £445, and Jessops for £410).
To cut a long story short, I nearly didn’t buy from them. When I looked them up, they appeared across various photography forums as being “dodgy” and “a scam”. One Wise One – it looks like photographers are worse than driving instructors when it comes to believing their own fabricated hype – said “if it looks too good to be true, it probably is”. However, between the lines it was clear that this was just opinion based on that deluded self-belief, and had nothing at all to do with concrete facts.
So, I ordered from SLRHut late Tuesday (their lines are open until 11pm). The product was shipped within 24 hours from the USA. It arrived with DHL in the UK in the early hours of Saturday morning. There was then a frustrating wait for nearly three days over the weekend (and Bank Holiday Monday) while it sat with DHL, who don’t deliver weekends or holidays. It arrived Tuesday morning, less than a week after I’d ordered it. It would probably have arrived a few days sooner if I’d have ordered on a Thursday or Friday, with no Bank Holiday.
SLRHut has a UK office, but it does not supply products from there, and the UK people are apparently only involved with returns and warranties. It ships from the US, and all import duties are included in the price. Products are not “grey” imports and have a full worldwide warranty. They are supplied with UK plugs on the power adapters. Ordering is quick and easy.
Basically, ignore any crap you read elsewhere. Although I’m sure that SLRHut has exactly the same problems any other retailer does – and I mean the occasional order going pear-shaped for some reason – you have absolutely no worries outside of that. They’re definitely kosher.
Update: SLRHut now takes payments via PayPal. Anyone who does that is hardly likely to be trying to scam you – Paypal would cut them up and hang them out to dry if they did! As I said above, SLRHut is definitely kosher, so don’t be worried about using them. And ignore any crap you read on photography forums denigrating them – such comments are usually made by people whose opinion of themselves is far greater than the reality.
Are SLRHut products “grey” imports?
No! My FZ-200 is a proper UK product with UK plugs and a UK warranty.
Do SLRHut products come with a UK plug fitted?
Yes. They are not grey imports.
Is SLRHut a UK company?
No. But it has UK offices.
Is SLRHut reputable?
Take a look at TrustPilot. They get a rating of 9.3/10 (as of December 2014). Ignore the jackass from Buxton who appears to be unable even to spell his own name properly – the fact they are not a UK company is totally irrelevant. And God only knows why someone would post this:
Very Good. I must be honest in saying that when I discovered all the orders will fulfilled from the USA I was very sceptical. However everything came and the service was surprisingly good.
And then only award 4 stars. What was he expecting?
Amazon only scores 6.1 on TrustPilot, Currys gets 1.0, and Argos gets 2.0. Yet SLRHut gets almost a perfect 10! You probably wouldn’t think twice about placing an online order with Currys if their price was right, would you?
Well, it’s been a long wait between the first announcement over a year ago and the Big Event itself. But the UK leg of Rush’s Clockwork Angels Tour is almost here at long last.
It’s been a nerve-wracking year worrying if my ticket agent would get me decent tickets, but he’s come up trumps once more (including the O2 one this time). I also came within a gnat’s whisker of front row seats and a meet’n’greet, but that’s another story.
I’ll be at all five of the shows once again – in London, Birmingham,Sheffield, Manchester, and Glasgow – and I can’t wait. But it’s less than a week to go now. And I’ve got a shiny new camera to try out, too.
I’ve got a rough idea of the set list, but apparently they’ve been changing it around for each of the different stages of the tour. So it’s a case of wait and see, really (which I have to say that I prefer).
A DVD of the tour is already planned, but a release date isn’t yet known (earlier reports of 21 May have proved to be incorrect).
The ASA has slammed Book Your Practical Test Online Ltd for the second time in less than 6 months. You may remember I reported on another of their adjudications in January this year. That last one was following deliberate attempts to look exactly like the old DirectGov booking site.
This time they have been pulled up over claims that they are “the fastest” and “the easiest” way to book your test online. Both claims were total bollocks even before ASA got on to the case. This time, Book Your Practical Test Online Ltd appears not even to have responded to the ASA to try and defend themselves, and ASA has concluded the same as me – that the claims are total bollocks (though not in those same words, of course).
I have a very low opinion of these scam artists. The only reason they get away with it is because English Law doesn’t have any balls, but plenty of loopholes for these bottom feeders to play with. They should not be doing this at all. It doesn’t matter that you include in your small print all sorts of disclaimers when you are purposely trying to mislead people with the big print and make them spend more than they need to by pretending you’re something you’re not.
Recently, two of my pupils have got caught in the web. Neither was aware that they were not booking directly with the DSA – and that’s where my argument comes into play. Book Your Practical Test Online Ltd knows full well that most people will fall into this category, and their previous deliberate attempts to mimic the DSA’s own website prove that beyond doubt. Let’s face facts here: no one in their right mind is going to pay £82 when they could be paying £62 with the DSA.
One pupil (around Christmas) had booked her test, and she phoned me to say that they’d told her they would get back to her when the test was booked! Alarm bells went off, and I immediately asked how much she’d paid. When she told me (£20 more than the DSA price) I informed her she had used a scam site. Fortunately, they’re not such big scammers that they won’t refund people’s money – they’d be shut down and prosecuted if they did that – and she got her money back and booked properly.
The second pupil tried to book her test a few weeks ago. She told me she couldn’t get online to book, as it wasn’t showing any free dates. Initially, I said the system must be down and to try the next day. But when she phoned me again because it was still not working properly, she added “and it’s more expensive than last time”. Again, alarm bells rang and it was confirmed she’d been sucked in by them.
These sorts of scammers deliberately engineer it so they come up in Google searches where they shouldn’t. And they have sponsored links in Google which means they guarantee themselves a prime place on any search to do with test booking. Even if you use “DSA” in your search, they still come up – indeed, adding “DSA” brings some of them higher up the normal search results, so it is clear what they are up to.
I should point out that anyone using Book Your Practical Test Online Ltd probably will get a test (I can’t comment on the others, though some will just take your money and run because they’re not even based in the UK). But people are unwittingly paying extra for something they didn’t want, ask for, or need, and they may get the run-around as a result. And that’s what makes it a scam.
It’s good to see that the DSA is using ASA to attack these scumbags.
Remember: to book your driving test, go to the DSA site. Do not use any other site.
adiNEWS needs your help, and in return we are offering you the opportunity to WIN a brand new iPad with 3G! – compliments of the lovely people over at Hitachi Capital Driving Instructor Centre.
The current series of feature articles in adiNEWS magazine focus on using the latest tablet and smartphone technology to help run a driving instructor business, from lesson plans and training aids, to admin and book keeping… but we think they can offer even more, and that’s where you come in…
Information Is Power!
We want to know ‘apps’ YOU use to make this possible. Whilst there are still only a few apps dedicated to driving instructors in particular, there are many others that can be used throughout your working day. So we want to know how many of you are harnessing the power of apps through your tablets and smartphones, whether you are operating your business using the latest technology and, if not, whether you are interested in doing so?
In return, we are very excited to announce that we shall be giving away this fantastic prize of a brand new iPad with 3G to one lucky entrant, no strings attached. All you have to be is an ADI or PDI and spend a minute of your time answering a few simple questions. We just want the facts and figures to understand where the industry is, where it wants to go in the digital revolution, and use the information to help everyone get more by unlocking this massive potential for their business.
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T&C’s Apply, see www.adinews.co.uk/competitions for details. Entries close on the 23rd June. Winner to be announced with the survey results in the August edition of adiNEWS.
adiNEWS and Hitachi Capital Driving Instructor Centre
This is an old story from 2011. Note the amendment at the bottom.
That made me smile. Someone found the blog on the search term “Watnall test centre first time pass rate”.
As I reported recently, Watnall began conducting tests from 1 March 2013 on a temporary basis. Pass rates are usually updated every 3 months, and the last publication date was 28/2/2013. They are overall pass rates – they don’t go into detail about how many tries candidates had before passing. Such information has to be requested specifically, and often doesn’t exist anyway.
I have just updated the article I wrote on the probability of passing your test. Basically, if you can drive well then you stand a good chance of passing. If you aren’t ready for your test then you stand a good chance of failing. It’s down to ability – not probability.
You can find current statistics on the DVSA’s website at GOV.UK. However, the pass rate at any given test centre has no bearing whatsoever on your chances of passing. You need to be able to drive properly to pass the test, and given that you are asking this question I would lay odds that you aren’t familiar with the Watnall test area – and that can affect your chances of passing.
I love this ad at the moment. I didn’t realise it was Eva Longoria until I looked it up. It’s for Sheba cat food.
[YouTube link now dead]
Mind you, I cringe a bit near the end when she’s dancing around the cat with her feet. It takes me back to a cat we used to have – if you’d have done that with her you’d have ended up in A&E.
I was browsing the BBC website and found this clip of a near-miss on a level crossing in Llangadog, Carmarthenshire. The clip shows the incident from the CCTV cameras both sides of the crossing.
Let’s get one thing straight: there is no way that the prat in that car should still have a driving licence, or ever be allowed to hold one again. And he or she should probably be in care for their own benefit, as well as everyone else’s.
Unfortunately, our society doesn’t use logic like that, and the solution – obviously – is that “level crossings “need to be made safer”. That’s because flashing lights, and all the signs and road markings, and the big metal rail-like things in the road, coupled with the fact that the prat in question (who appeared to be going a little on the quick side as he passed through) and probably lives in the area, are clearly not enough.
The story doesn’t mention if he was prosecuted.
The problem is that even when crossings have barriers there are morons out there who either don’t see them or don’t care. ITN covered the same topic a couple of months ago, and their clips unbelievably show women with pushchairs running past red lights and descending barriers! Me and one of my pupils even saw one a couple of months ago when a woman in Sneinton wove her car past stopped traffic and around descending barriers – I’m sure the violation camera got her, and I hope she enjoys her lessons as she works towards passing her test again after however long she was banned for (though I must say, she is probably still driving – her sort always does).
This story from the Bromsgrove Standard says that driving tests will be available from Halfords in Bromsgrove from 19 June 2013. Tests will be conducted on Wednesdays and Fridays – the first time the town has had tests there in over 17 years.
I have my own reservations about this decentralisation thing. For a start, I’m fairly certain that the examiners conducting tests have not been employed in addition to those already covering Redditch and Birmingham, so it isn’t difficult to imagine who will be providing cover for Bromsgrove. You all know what happens when you spread butter too thinly, so you don’t need me to spell it out.
Bromsgrove managed perfectly well for 17 years without a test centre, so it is hard to find the logic in stretching the services at Redditch and Birmingham more thinly just so it can have one. Well, not unless you count trying to win votes as logical – this is, after all, a LibCon initiative.
Lumix FZ200. But it wasn’t cheap. Even now, Amazon sells it for £400, but when I first started looking it was anywhere between £400-£500 (indeed, currently John Lewis sells it for £440, Panasonic for £445, and Jessops for £410).
nothing at all to do with concrete facts.
the CCTV cameras both sides of the crossing.