Well done to Annalie, who passed first time yesterday with 9 driver faults. Now you’ll be able to take the girls to ballet practice or whatever it is they want to do without having to rely on other people.
Since I took you on, you’ve always been a good driver, so this is a fitting reward for all that hard work.
All we’ve got to do now is get that lummox of a boyfriend passed – which he’s never going to do if he doesn’t start thinking about taking some lessons on a regular basis.
Someone found the blog on the search term “how to stop a car at a junction using clutch and brakes”.
If you’re on an upward incline, and assuming that you can already find the bite quickly and gently, the best way to do this is to slow the car enough that it won’t coast as far as the line, then use the gas/bite to gently move it forwards. In other words, it is YOU making it go towards the give way line – not the momentum of the car.
The last thing you want to be doing is flying in so fast that you’ve got to brake hard. You will panic and forget to control it gently.
You can hold the car completely still using the gas and bite on an upward slope if you can control your feet well enough. It is not good practice to do this for too long, though, as it wears out the clutch. It can also be dangerous – if people are walking behind or in front of you, for example. Use common sense to decide when to use the handbrake and when to “slip the clutch”, as it is sometimes known. When you’re ready to move off, simply apply more gas and gently raise the clutch (the amount of gas depends on the slope you’re on).
If you’re on a downward incline, obviously you’ll need to use the brake to hold the car at the give way line. You need to be able to reliably lift your foot off the brake, set the gas, and find the bite quickly, but without stalling or lurching forward.
It is often quicker and safer for new drivers to use the handbrake, and then move off in the normal way. Holding the car on the bite can result in rocking backwards and forwards (like most pratmobiles do at lights), rolling back into another car, or creeping into the path of other traffic. However, if you can teach yourself to do it it’s a great skill.
I teach my pupils how to do it on a hill fairly early on. Some never get it perfect, but then they don’t need to be able to do it perfectly in order to pass their tests and be safe drivers. At the very least, it helps them understand the clutch and how to move away properly.
But the ones who take to it never look back. As I say to them on the first lesson, when we have a few tries: “THAT is the secret to be able to drive the car. If you can do that, you can make the car do anything!”
Remember: don’t do it for too long – just if you need it for a few moments. Never do it if you have people walking in front of or behind you.
The Boston Standard reports that the borough’s young drivers face “one of the highest risks of being injured in car crashes in the country”.
Let’s just get things straight here. The figures do not mean that your chances of having an accident increase just by moving to Boston – it’s the higher proportion of teenagers brought up there only having a single helix in their DNA that is to blame.
Yet again, the real problem is being shoved under the carpet. The reason Boston teenagers are having more accidents is that they are bigger prats than in other places. Someone needs to be dealing with that – not trying to blame it on statistics that they don’t really understand.
“Experts” are trying to suggest that poor public transport and long distances from home to school are to blame. But this argument is based on totally separate “statistics” designed to dumb things down. It would appear that if you live in Boston, it’s a 3 mile round trip even to go to the toilet, and you need a passport to go to school because you have to move through several international borders!
Let’s do what the Boston Standard didn’t do, and actually read the report, which you can access here.
Instead of adopting the Boston Standard’s selective and scaremongering approach, lets list ALL the factors the report identified.
Analysis has identified a number of common factors present in young driver collisions, including the following:
- They tend to drive older cars with less crash protection
- There are often three or more casualties in their collisions
- Their collisions often occur at night and at weekends
- Their collisions often occur on wet roads
- Their collisions often occur on minor roads in rural areas with a 60mph speed limit
- Their collisions are often single vehicle so involve no other road user
- They often occur on bends, particularly on rural roads
- Their vehicle often skids, and in some cases then overturns
- Their vehicle often leaves the road, and in many cases hits a roadside object or enters a ditch
Summarising, you can say that young drivers drive bangers filled with their mates, and mostly at night (a progression from arseing about on skateboards and BMX bikes outside the chippie). Since they’re usually travelling at speed, their accidents occur on wet roads and bends – particularly on roads where it is possible to put your foot down – which results in the car skidding and overturning, and often hitting objects off the road (i.e. trees and posts).
The Boston Standard appears to have only seen the one about rural roads and taken it out of context with the others.
The report notes:
Nationally, the research found that young drivers who are from rural areas are significantly overrepresented within the collision statistics compared to their urban counterparts.
So, young drivers in rural areas DO have more accidents overall. When you look at the report’s bar chart for the three areas it has identified – urban, town, and rural – you see that there is a progression from the first category up to the third. Basically, in places where you can’t drive fast, you stand less chance of hurting yourself than you do in places where you CAN drive fast. It’s bloody obvious.
The report further discovers that there is no difference between the different areas for drivers 30 and over. Tellingly, it uses the term “mature adults”. Now we’re getting to the nitty-gritty of the cause.
The report then adds:
It would therefore suggest that rural roads themselves are not responsible for the increased collision involvement of rural young drivers.
The Boston Standard and it’s “experts” are talking rubbish, then, when they try to sweep the problem under the rug.
The report continues:
There is very little difference between young and older drivers for the speed limit of the road on which they were involved in collisions.
Quite. It is inappropriate speed that is the issue. Inappropriate for the situation, and inappropriate for the driver’s skills (or lack thereof).
The report says:
The mileage data shows that rural residents have 31% higher annual average mileage than their urban counterparts. For adult drivers, this does not lead to a higher collision risk… Young rural drivers, however, are 37% more likely to be involved in a collision than urban young drivers.
This is just stating the obvious. The longer you’re in the car driving it, the more likely you are to have an accident if you’re already in a higher risk group.
But what shoots all of this out of the water is the risk map included in the report. Some of the most rural areas – and ones with the most winding and out-of-the-way roads – such as ALL of Scotland, and large parts of the northern areas have risk indices that are around the the norm (100). The peaks correspond generally to very specific areas of well-known idiot-country. The lowest indices relate to exclusively urban areas – the report makes that clear,
The report concludes that younger drivers are at risk, particularly on rural roads. That has been known for years. The report also concludes that it isn’t the roads themselves that are the problem. It is specifically younger drivers, for whom the risks increase the more rural their driving areas are. It states clearly:
…this would imply that there is something about rurality and young drivers (through inexperience and/or attitude) that leads to increased collision risk.
THIS IS PRECISELY THE PROBLEM.
It must be obvious that since you cannot create experience out of nothing, then care is needed while it is being acquired. Young drivers simply do not exercise care – they have appalling attitudes on the road. And they are clearly less likely to do so in certain areas – Boston might have come out in the top risk group, but there are plenty of considerably more rural locations which didn’t.
Looking at my own region, I note that Mansfield and Bassetlaw feature well above the norm. And yet Nottingham – which I can assure you has it’s fair share of complete prats – is right down at the bottom (i.e. the good) end. The numbers don’t seem to prove anything when you consider that detail.
This story is a little confusing if you read into it . It says that there is a scheme – The Blue Lamp Trust – running in Basingstoke aimed at improving the driving standards of company car drivers. That’s not a bad thing at all.
But the story’s author says clearly that when he went to take an assessment, the trainer immediately discovered that his driving licence was out of date – it had, in fact, expired the previous May. The article says:
The lesson started badly. A quick inspection of my driving licence revealed it expired in May, something I had been blissfully unaware of.
But then it goes on to report how the author got on on his assessment. It makes no mention of any delay while the licence was updated. The author explains how he subsequently “passed” the assessment. It is clear that the assessment went ahead in spite of the driver having no valid driver’s licence.
It raises a few questions, not least the one about what law allows you to drive on the roads if you don’t have a licence. One that expired almost a year ago is not valid.
Another question is how can someone who hasn’t got one, and who wasn’t aware of the fact his had expired, pass an assessment which by definition would require the person being assessed to know about this and deal with it?
Naturally, that then raises questions about the administration of the scheme (registered as a charity, it appears).
You can look at this story from two sides. One side – the cosy, mumsy side – makes you think “ahhh! That’s sweet”.
The other side – the one involving cold logic – makes you say “but she’s 100 years old!”
The lady in question, Susie Dixon, never had to take a driving test. Back when she was a girl there was no such thing as the driving test. But that’s not really relevant. Neither is the fact that she has never had an accident in all her time on the road.
The simple fact is, she’s a 100-year old person who, it can be guaranteed, will never be a 150-year old person. No matter how healthy she is for a 100-year old, she could just die or have her health deteriorate at any time, just like that. That starts to become a significant risk above 60 years, and it gets worse the older you get.
Miss Dixon has been given another 3 years before she needs another health check-up.
The way her family gush over how she can still remember things from when they were kids hints strongly at there being certain “little old lady” traits that aren’t being mentioned.
One son said: “She is fantastic for her age”.
Yes. She is certainly in a tiny, tiny minority. Most people her age cannot drive safely. No mention is made of how she drives – other than that she’s never had an accident.
This is an interesting story. Aviva, the insurance group, is trialling software that runs on your smartphone and which records how carefully you’re driving.
I’m sure it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. After all, having this software running is likely to slow down the phone, making texting that little bit more difficult.
Seriously, though, the kind of people who it’s aimed at – the ones who ought to be permanently tagged for the whole of their lives – are unlikely to take the option.
The idea is not that much different to the smartbox technology being used by other insurers – except that it is likely to be much cheaper to implement, and (unless they have very strict rules about its recording patterns) much easier to switch off or bypass for that crucial pratmobile meet at McDonalds on Sunday night.
Have people never heard of having two pay-as-you-go phones?
A belated well done to Kevin, who passed his test on Monday with just one driver fault.
As I said at the time: you BERK. I nearly had another clean sheet!
Seriously, though, an excellent result from a good driver (but with terrible navigational skills – must get a satnav before you go anywhere). I know he’s already been out, which is a good thing if you can do it.
He was incredibly negative about his chances, but at least one of us was proved right.
Driving to a lesson tonight, a prat in a dark blue Auris (reg. no. FL58 VHR ) decided that in order to turn left just after traffic lights, he would tailgate me in the right-hand lane, then overtake on the opposite side of the road, then break the speed limit in order to cut everyone else up in order to get to wherever he was going in West Bridgford.
Mind you, it’s been a fun week as far as idiots on the road is concerned. To start with, people who are going to cut you up really ought not to have
personalised plates – as the Mercedes (reg. no. EJC 613 ) and the Audi (reg. no. X4 GEB ) who simply had to get by my pupils illustrated clearly.
Then there was the white van ape today in the middle of Netherfield (reg. no. W194 RVC ), 
who came flying up to the mini-roundabout as my pupil was emerging. My pupil stopped, thinking the imbecile was going to pull out, so he then took advantage of the pause and did so. I bet him and the apprentice monkey in the passenger seat thought they were fantastically clever.
A lot of lucky people this week whose registration numbers I noted, but whose antics I can’t recall in order.
An ex-public schoolboy – William Colebrook, 23 – has been arrested for driving at 113mph in a 50mph zone in Switzerland. He was taking part in an exclusive “rally” from Mayfair, London, to Verbier in the Swiss Alps.
He was driving an Audi R8, valued at £157,000. Entry to the “rally” is by invitation only, and costs £2,250 per head.
He demonstrated his maturity over the matter by tweeting:
Being delivered to the #DodgeballRally finish line by police car is pretty badass. Having to fly home is not…
I wonder what mummy and daddy think of him? I wonder if they care?
Cool dude, eh? In reality, an utter prick.
This is an old story. As of December 2014 I cannot find any further updates, although the story is currently receiving quite a few hits.
Last year, Autoglass announced that it was shedding 400 jobs. A reader also furnished me with some additional information.
It has been very quiet in the intervening 9 months, but the dramatic increase in the numbers of people finding the blog on terms involving “Autoglass” made me suspect something was afoot. And here is the news story that proves it (link now dead).
It’s worth a reminder that Autoglass announced last June that it was to shed 10% (400) of its workforce because people apparently were driving more carefully and not breaking as many windscreens.
This latest story says that Autoglass is beginning a “consultation period” with staff after announcing a reduction in contact centres and branches. These closures have apparently been briefed to staff as “operational changes” (that gives me flashbacks again to when I worked in the rat race). I like how it says this is to “improve efficiency” – last year, it was because no one was breaking windscreens!
In short, Autoglass has got to make people redundant because it is losing money – you can’t dress it up any more than that.
Another surprise is that whereas the original story mentioned 400 jobs, this latest one involves 52 call centre staff and the closure of 16 branches, involving a further 500 staff. That second figure was not provided by the official Autoglass spokeswoman, but “a source”.
So, not 400 but over 550 staff look set to lose their jobs.
To be honest, when you read this latest story, it bears almost no resemblance to the one from last summer. It’s hard to believe the redundancies are part of the same issue.
Good luck to all those involved.