Diary Of An ADI

Following on from the BBC3 show I mentioned a few days ago, a story appeared in The Telegraph. It provides a little extra information and comment.

I mentioned previously that I couldn’t find any specific information relating to Sophie Morgan’s accident, which left her in a wheelchair. In this new story, she states that she was sober having been to a party until 4am, whereupon the group decided to then travel to an “after-party”. They were all “singing loudly” as she misjudged a bend at 70mph and spun off into a field, rolling three times before coming to a stop.

She says:

I often find myself thinking now that, as odd as it sounds, the accident was the best thing that could have happened to me.

I’m not going to go into that side of things too deeply, but you can make up your own mind from what you read in the Telegraph about the party, the times of day involved, and anything else you can glean from the description. All I will say is that the quote above points to very understandable attempts by Ms Morgan to deal with the most life-changing event imaginable in the most positive way possible. She is to be applauded for such a positive outlook, but there is still no denying the obvious mistake Ms Morgan makes in using it as some sort of absolute reference point on which to base her views on driving. It is not absolute – it is highly personal and very skewed.

The article is an extension of Ms Morgan’s current crusade concerning new drivers. Therefore, she refers to the other current BBC show, Barely Legal Drivers, saying that the mistakes being made by those on the programme make her “flinch and squirm”. Well, they make me flinch and squirm, too. However, unlike Ms Morgan, my first consideration is that the people featured on that show have been chosen specifically for TV purposes. They conform to what reality show researchers deem “good TV”, and so are loud, obnoxious, giggly, sexually uninhibited, photogenic (in TV researcher terms, anyway)… and have demonstrably questionable driving skills at the outset, which are exacerbated by all the previous characteristics and an obvious desire to play up to the cameras.

Not all new drivers are like that.

I will repeat something I have said before – something which is not just my opinion, but simply a statement of the way it is. The driving test is just the first step on a lifelong learning curve. It always has been.

When I first passed my test, by definition I was inexperienced. However, the big difference between me (and most other new drivers) and the people featured in the Barely Legal Drivers programme was that I wasn’t full of myself. I wasn’t trying to get my 15 minutes of fame on TV, nor was I playing up to a camera fitted in my car or following me into nightclubs. My aim, each time I went out, was to try and use what I’d learned on my lessons and previous solo journeys and not to hit anyone or anything. Therefore, I drove carefully and succeeded in that aim. While I was doing it, I gained experience, and it explains why I now do the job I do.

But it isn’t just me. Not one of my ex-learners has been involved in a serious accident since passing their tests. A couple have had minor bumps, but there is a world of difference between a low-speed shunt or minor prang and bouncing your car off a tree or embankment and into a field at 70mph in the dead of night – and I’ll come back to that difference later. Now, I have no control over how my ex-pupils choose to drive. In fact, if one of them decided to drive at 70mph on a country lane in the dark with a load of drunk mates, made a mistake, and rolled into a field, it definitely wouldn’t be as a result of something I’d taught them. Nor would it be as a result of something I hadn’t taught them. It would be their own damned fault for being stupid.

The people featured in Licence To Kill do not represent the majority of new drivers – certainly not those I’ve taught, anyway. Of one of those featured, Jayme Mann, Ms Morgan says:

…who was just a year older than me when she was found guilty of careless driving. She, too, was driving at night on an empty rural road, and, like me, was sober and seat-belted when she lost control of her car…

The judge blamed the accident on her lack of driving experience and Jayme confessed to me that she had no idea how to correct the steering mistakes she had made on the dark and wet road that fatal night. That’s because, like me, she had never been taught what to do in those conditions; it is not required to pass the test. I believe this is a terrible mistake.

NOT ONE NORMAL DRIVER OUT THERE ON THE ROADS HAS BEEN TAUGHT HOW TO DEAL WITH A RURAL BEND SKID IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT AS A RESULT OF DRIVING LIKE AN IDIOT! SKID PAN TRAINING DOESN’T COVER IT, EITHER. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING CAN – EVER.

You see, when we cover the emergency stop, I discuss with all my pupils how to handle a skid. How to steer gently into it, and how to regain control. Skid pan training goes a small step further by allowing people to actually put that into practice. But nothing deals with a frightened rabbit of a new driver, distracted for an endless number of reasons, slamming into a tree and bouncing into a field because they misjudged a dark bend in the middle of the night as a result of driving too fast for their level of experience.

Prevention is better than cure. In fact, prevention is the only sensible way of dealing with it.

Ms Morgan disagrees with government plans to impose more restrictions on new drivers. She says that “restrictions aren’t the most obvious solution”, when the presence of such restrictions would clearly have prevented her own accident (if she’d chosen to abide by them, of course). She then says:

…it is estimated that poor attitude and behaviour contribute to 19 out of 20 crashes. Surely we need to change how we initially learn to drive, so we understand the impact our attitude and behaviour has on our safety?

How on earth does she draw that conclusion? Poor attitude and behaviour are to blame, so improve driver training? What on earth is she talking about?

But it all becomes clear at the end:

I have become an ambassador for Drive iQ, one example of a free online programme specially developed by traffic psychologists which allows students to experience simulated versions of driving in difficult conditions…

I’ve written about DriveIQ before (while they were still a2om, when the latest government proposals were first mooted, and when Ms Morgan first started making ill-informed comments about learning to drive). The pieces of the jigsaw are gradually falling into place, as it appears the those “ill-informed comments” are actually DriveIQ propaganda. Other DriveIQ propaganda includes statements such as:

Traditional driving lessons concentrate on the technical skills needed to pass the test but have failed to evolve to prevent statistics that show 19 out of 20 road accidents are caused by poor attitude and behaviour, not vehicle-handling skills.

Drive iQ was developed to fill the gaping void in the current learning process.

Those two are what Ms Morgan has quoted parrot-fashion. Again, you have to ask the question: if attitude and behaviour are the real problems, and not driving skills, how does playing a simulation where you smash into a tree or a kerb fix that?

In our Drive iQ test, Lauren [a new driver] had failed to recognise the dangers we were in [and “crashed”], despite having passed the test to hold a UK licence. If the situation had been real, Lauren would have helped bolster the shocking statistic that one in five young people crashes in the first six months of driving.

If I had had the opportunity to watch the simulation of a crash like mine play out on a computer screen, my life would have turned out very differently.

I hope anyone reading all this remembers DriveIQ – and the fact that we live in a country with a burgeoning compensation culture – if they have an accident after passing their tests. After all, if you’re going to claim (or allow someone to claim for you) that you’ve discovered the Holy Grail for preventing accidents, you’ve got a hell of a lot to live up to.

A computer simulation will not teach you how to deal with that 3am bend in the dark and wet, when you’re doing 70mph and arguing with someone in the car or trying to send a Tweet to someone on your mobile. You shouldn’t be doing 70mph or using your bloody phone in the first place. And if you’re so stupid that the threat of a ban and prison isn’t enough to stop you, seeing some video nasties – or starring in one via a simulation – isn’t likely to have much effect either.