Diary Of An ADI

I sometimes wish parents would get it into their thick, money-grabbing skulls that you can’t just count on “getting lucky” and pass your driving test if you can’t drive, anymore than you can count of winning the lottery if you don’t buy a ticket!

I don’t think they realise what kind of rubbish parents it makes them by even hoping that little Jonny or Kylie might “get lucky” in the first place – especially because even if they did get lucky, they’d then stand a bloody good chance of getting “unlucky” and killing themselves (or someone else) once they got out alone and started showing off.

Two things got me thinking about this recently. The first was a call from an ex-pupil who’d passed her test in an automatic well over a year ago but who had not driven since. She was taking auto lessons for almost two years before eventually passing her test on her seventh attempt. However, before that she’d been with me doing manual lessons, also for two years, and she never got anywhere near test standard. Don’t get me wrong – I’d tried to get her to switch to auto much earlier on in her training, but she refused because she’d bought a manual car. She was simply incapable of reliably mastering the foot coordination needed to stop without stalling. It was only when I found out she’d sold her car some time later that both me and her son got on to her again and finally persuaded her to switch. But as I say, it still took her another two years and seven test attempts.

Flatteringly, she always credited me with getting her through her test. She was a really nice lady and we’ve always stayed in touch by telephone, and although I hadn’t heard from her for a year, she called me when she recently bought her own car and asked if I’d take her out to get used to it.

I have to admit that I was very nervous. To be fair, she was actually much better than I had expected, but there were still many traces of the old style. For example, as I got her to pull into her driveway at the end of that lesson she nearly ran into a fence as she hit the gas instead of the brake. She planned to drive to work that day, and I warned her to be careful. But when I called her the next day to see how it went it seems she had already scraped her gatepost. To make matters worse, she called me the next day to tell me she’d done it again – this time causing somewhat more damage to the car.

It’s a horrible position to be in. I have no control over her because she is a full licence holder, and yet if I did have any control I would have forbidden her to drive at all. Part of me wonders how she will ever be a safe driver – in spite of having taken over 200 hours of lessons and seven tests! I really feel sorry for her. But this leads me on to the second thing – the thing that I was referring to right at the start.

I’m usually quite fortunate when it comes to people wanting to take tests before they’re ready. First of all, I try to nip it in the bud as soon as it starts – sometimes even nipping it before it starts (it’s in my T&Cs). If they still won’t listen, then the bottom line is that they’re not going to test in my car, and whatever happens after that is up to them. A good illustration of this is a pupil I had not long ago (or his family, anyway). He was a nice lad, but very quiet. So quiet, in fact, that I am certain that there was some underlying issue, though “the family” insisted not – even though they followed him around, even on some of his lessons. He’d apparently had quite a few lessons with a previous instructor, but his dad reckoned he was being taken for a ride. When he came to me he had a test already booked, which I made them cancel after I’d seen him drive. He couldn’t possibly have passed.

The trouble was, the dad kept saying “I’d like him to have a go” (i.e. at the test). I made it clear that there was no way he was going in my car if he was not likely to pass. I always explain that I could lose my job if I send dangerous pupils to test – which is technically true, even if it’s somewhat exaggerated (as an aside, it’s nice when the examiner comments that it was a “nice drive” as they leave the car. It’s less nice when it is obvious the candidate shouldn’t have been there to start with. The examiner knows, and so do you).

So anyway, they reluctantly agreed to “move” the original test back by just over a month. I’d have preferred an indefinite cancel until I could see light at the end of the tunnel, but they were obviously just trying to keep the number of lessons to a minimum. In that extra time, the lad took just three 1 hour lessons (with several cancellations). He couldn’t do any of the manoeuvres correctly, nor were they getting better very quickly, and the pressure to get him to test standard with yet another idiotic test date looming was huge. To be honest, since he also just wanted to “have a go”, the pressure was much worse for me. I had also discovered since taking him on that in the case of reversing into a corner he strongly believed that when the kerb was coming towards him in the mirror then it was moving away in reality (honestly, he said exactly this), and it meant that every single time we did it he would repeatedly and determinedly steer the wrong way (or in random directions if he tried to think about it). With the test only weeks away, and a couple more hours of lessons at best, I couldn’t see how I’d be able to fix this and everything else in time.

The last straw came on his final lesson with me. I asked him to follow the road ahead at a large, very busy, light-controlled junction. As the lights changed we drove into it – and then did an emergency stop right in the middle as he suddenly decided he didn’t know where “straight ahead” was (I stress again that his test was literally a fortnight away). On that same lesson, on three separate occasions I asked him to turn right – either at lights or at junctions with filter lanes – and on every occasion he made no attempt to move the car into the appropriate lane, and would have turned right across other traffic. And no matter how many times we travelled the same road with speed limit changes from 20/30, 30/40, or back again, he would simply not see the signs at least once per lesson and I’d have to intervene. And finally, on that last session, we had a go at reversing into a corner and he just drove straight into the kerb (like he did on every previous lesson).

At that point I terminated the lesson and went to speak to his father. I told him that the lad simply wasn’t ready and that they should just cancel the test and not put him under such pressure. Yet again, the father repeated that he “just wanted him to have a go [at the test]” – at least the fourth time he had said it to me. Yet again, I made it clear that I was not taking him to test because he had no chance of passing as things were. My argument about unfair pressure on the lad was totally lost on this guy. I never heard from them again, and my blood runs cold at what could happen to this obviously vulnerable young man if he goes to test or – worse – if he passes too soon and is as unpredictable on the road as the lady I mentioned above.

What makes it particularly annoying is that my aim is to get pupils to test standard quickly and efficiently. I’m fully aware that learning to drive is expensive, so I push them hard to get them up to a safe standard. If I ever thought I was milking people for money then I’d give the job up instantly – my moral code is better than that. And yet with some people this just will not sink in. The guy in question only wanted his son – a young man who obviously had problems – to take a test that I knew he had no chance of passing on the off chance he’d pass, with no regard for what might happen to him if he did. And God knows what stories they’ll be telling their next instructor about me.

One thing is certain, though. I’ll sleep easier now. I wonder if the young lad’s father will? Unfortunately, he is completely clueless about the matter, so I doubt that it will affect him.