From the Bournemouth Daily Echo via the newsfeeds, a driving instructor was “stunned” to get a £70 fine after his pupil stopped on the reverse round a corner exercise to let a car pass. The car turned out to be a Poole Council Camera Car.

The instructor claims his pupil was acting properly – and on the surface of it, that seems to be the case. However, the council mentions a bus stop in its version.

If you look up the road that the instructor was using via Google (Catalina Drive), you can clearly see that just in front of the corner apparently being used there IS indeed a bus stop (and yellow lines all around the bend). It would be necessary for the car to stop inside this bus stop bay in order to commence the manoeuvre – quite a long way inside if the manoeuvre was being done in usual learner fashion (i.e. 2-3 car lengths ahead of the bend).

Poole Council’s website – specifically its guidelines about issuing PCNs (penalty charge notices) – say:

CONTRAVENTION CODE: 47

Stopped on a restricted bus stop or stand

This code is used when a vehicle other than a bus parks in a restricted bus
stop. Only buses may stop in the marked area.

Coaches may also stop to pick up and set down passengers but not to park
awaiting passengers.

No loading/unloading is permitted.

The instructor in question can argue all he likes, and claim to know all the rules (which is exactly what he does), but the council’s rule is quite clear. If you stop in a bus stop area you are liable for a fine.

He is lucky that they got the road name wrong on his PCN – so he got off on a technicality. Otherwise, he would have had to pay or appeal.

I don’t have much time for council snooping, and in situations like this then maybe Poole Council ought to exercise a little more discretion, since a lot of motorists must get away with stopping for the few seconds it takes to turn around when the camera car isn’t around. But if they don’t show discretion, they don’t, simple as that. And people have to live with it.

The local PCN rules are crystal clear and the ADI obviously didn’t know them as well he he thought he did. Whatever city you live in, you need to make sure you know what the local council will allow, and what it will stamp on. For example, some will let you use bus lanes to get past cars which are turning right, whereas others will fine you instantly for doing the same.

It isn’t illegal to stop at a bus stop – but the Highway Code says you shouldn’t. PCNs are civil and not criminal affairs, in any case. And for those people who only like to quote part of the Highway Code, here’s the bit they keep forgetting (note the highlighted part):

240

You MUST NOT stop or park on:

• the carriageway or the hard shoulder of a motorway except in an emergency (see Rule 270)
• a pedestrian crossing, including the area marked by the zig-zag lines (see Rule 191)
• a clearway (see ‘Traffic signs’)
• taxi bays as indicated by upright signs and markings
• an urban clearway within its hours of operation, even when a broken white line is on your side of the road, except to pick up or set down passengers (see ‘Traffic signs’)
• a road marked with double white lines, except to pick up or set down passengers
• a tram or cycle lane during its period of operation
• a cycle track
• red lines, in the case of specially designated ‘red routes’, unless otherwise indicated by signs

Any vehicle may enter a bus lane to stop, load or unload where this is not prohibited (see Rule 141).

This whole affair is between this ADI and Poole Council (and it’s enforcement policies) – was the bus stop in question “restricted”? There is no single nationwide answer.

But you have to ask: where’s the bus going to go if it turns up and there is a learner arseing about in the bay?

An ADI ought be able to work that one out for themselves.

This story came through yesterday. I nearly missed it, because it isn’t obviously related to driving or driving instruction – until you think about what it is saying.

It says that retail figures released by the Office for National Statistics confirm that discounting is the only factor driving sales at the moment, and consumers are reluctant to spend. It warns of another difficult year.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that business overheads are covered by income from sales, with the difference being business profit. It’s fairly obvious that if income from sales falls then so does profit – and it’s even more obvious that if the profit is negative, you’re going to go out of business very quickly.

Well, I say it’s obvious… but it’s clearly not as obvious as it should be to many driving instructors out there.

Even in my neck of the woods, where the typical hourly rate is £23 or £24 an hour, the number of cars you see with stupid prices plastered all over them is unbelievable. The British Retail Consortium in that link is certainly not wrong.

How do these instructors think they are ever going to be able to charge a sensible price again without losing work? After all, all these special offers are designed to fill empty diaries “until it picks up”. It’s debatable whether they actually do that in any case, but the more work you get the greater your overheads (fuel) become, and if you charge stupid prices you quickly run into trouble with your profits. Let’s look at an example.

Imagine an instructor charging £22 an hour, but with very little work – say, 10 hours a week. His car costs him £100, and the fuel for those 10 hours about £70. His income is £220, and his expenditure £170. His profit (wages) is therefore £50.

If that same instructor does a silly offer of “10 lessons for £99” and drops his price to £16 (like one I’ve seen recently), then if his diary suddenly rockets to 40 hours a week (which is highly unlikely) his profit will be somewhere in the region of £250.

If his diary only goes up to 20 hours – which is MUCH more likely – his profit will be in the region of £30. So by cutting his prices he is doing twice as much work for 40% less profit!

Even at 30 hours of work – the most many instructors can expect even under the best circumstances – his profit will only rise to around £160 for a tripling of the workload to a level where most people would simply conk out with exhaustion – particularly if they are new ADIs!

Of course, with such low profits you’ll inevitably want to cut your costs, and the one that drives profit most of all is the cost of fuel – which has already risen by 40% in the last three years, with the possibility of another 15% this year. So your attempts to not drive much on lessons will have pupils queuing up for the exit.

The price-cutters simply can’t see the damage they’re doing to themselves and others.

To make matters worse, they do it in the firm belief that when things pick up they can charge a sensible hourly rate again. But if you snagged your pupils with stupid prices, how are you ever going to expect to keep them if you hike prices by 40% again? It isn’t going to happen.

Price-cutting is simply business suicide.