Well done Callie, who passed today first time with 10 driver faults – and who has beaten her brother, who began lessons before she did. I like a bit of sibling rivalry!
She’s a nice driver who plans to buy her own car as soon as possible. Like many of my past pupils, she has also been a pleasure to teach for the duration. Looking back, she only began driving in August, so she hasn’t been with me all that long come to think of it.
I’ve talked about annoying adverts on a number of occasions, and ones like the Lucozade or Heinz ads, where the agency involved has just got it soooo wrong.
But then one like this comes along. It’s for Southern Comfort, and it’s brilliant.
(YouTube link dead)
You wouldn’t think that a fat, middle-aged guy on a beach would work, but it does. And that dog makes it better. The soundtrack just glues it together.
Incidentally, the song is apparently called Hit Or Miss, by Odetta (c. 1970). It fits in, because I thought the warm colour in the ad gave it a 70s feel.
Well done to Mike, who passed today with just 2 driver faults. Now he can visit his friends in London without the hassle.
It was his second attempt – he should have passed first time (one of those people you’d not be surprised at coming away with a clean sheet) but for one mistake – but he’s been one of the best learners I’ve had recently, so I was confident he could do it.
He should be on the road by the end of the day! That’s what I like to see.
I went to a great show on Monday, 5th November, at Nottingham’s Rock City.
I heard Steel Panther on Planet Rock last year, when just about the only song of theirs that can be played in public without upsetting people was aired. So I kept a lookout for them touring. I wasn’t disappointed.
Steel Panther is variously described under such genres as glam rock, comedy rock, heavy metal, and hair metal. If I was going to add my own description I’d class them as a very adult version of The Darkness, and by that I mean you wouldn’t want your granny to see them and – if you were a decent parent – your kids, either.
They come from California and released their debut album Feel The Steel in 2009. From what I’d been picking up myself, they were getting rave reviews and I wanted to see them live. Apparently, tickets sold out almost immediately for the Rock City gig and several of their upcoming UK shows are also sold out.
The band members have suitably glam names – Michael Starr (vocals), Lexxi Foxxx (bass), Satchel (guitar), and Stix Zadinia (drums) – and are huge posers. Lexxi Foxxx reminds me a bit of Marilyn from the 80s pop scene (in looks), and he spent the evening with a sequinned hand-mirror fixing his hair. The others were just really in-your-face.
All four of them are brilliant musicians – Satchel’s guitar solo, which involved him playing drums at the same time, was fantastic to watch, and included classic riffs from the likes of Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath. But they’re also great comedians and experts at manipulating the crowd.
After the first song they spent about 10 minutes telling jokes. I had to laugh when Starr suddenly pointed and shouted “Hey, boobies out” as some of the girls started lifting their shirts. Apparently this is par for the course at their shows. There were frequent periods of jokes and other talking, but it didn’t ruin the show in any way.
I laughed again when Starr climbed on to the top drum step, made as if to jump off, then stepped down one or two, jumped, and fell over (all choreographed). The others walked over to him, looked down, and said “he’s all right, he’s all right”. Then Satchel shouted “who wants to see him jump off the top f—— step”?” He promptly did it with the splits, and properly this time. The whole show was filled with stuff like this, in between brilliant rock songs and consummate showmanship.
If you don’t mind swearing, suggestive lyrics, and over-the-top showmanship, you’ve just got to get to one of Steel Panther’s shows.
Well, the temperature dropped below10°C a few times over a couple of days, and a bit of snow fell in the south. And we all know what that means, kiddies…
It’s the Annual Winter Tyre Argument.
This year it seems to have taken a lightly sinister turn – or rather, it has got nasty right from the get go instead of dragging on for about four months, and then getting nasty.
Some of the forums frequently bemoan the dearth of new posters and, in some cases, any posters at all. Their administrators try to explain it away as apathy, or maybe provide some other convoluted explanation which could easily form the plot of another Harry Potter book if J K Rowling ever decided to go back to that series. But what they continually fail to understand is that it is the “characters” (i.e. the regulars) with their “strong views” (i.e. arrogance) who are the main problem. The lurking non-posters even tell them this, yet they still ignore it, probably because it would mean losing one of their few remaining contributors and – in far too many cases – someone they know.
Blatant advertising, for example, will often get a new member banned immediately. But the “regulars” are at it all the time (some of them only ever post anyway when it’s time for a bit of publicity). Heck, the main reason any newly-qualified ADI joins forums and associations is to get their name about, so stopping them from doing it merely because they’re not yet in the clique is just stupid. Let’s face facts here, if a new ADI joins a forum, gets lambasted for asking an “obvious” question or wrist-slapped by the moderators for “advertising”, is it any surprise they don’t participate ever again on that particular forum? (Edit: And another one is doing it now! A playground spat on one site, carried over to snidey remarks on the other. I hope his misguided belief that forum moderators often aren’t the most objective people to appeal to doesn’t come as too much of a disappointment when he finds out).
Back to the Great Winter Tyre Yawn, though. One poster with “strong views” has made their usual absolute statement on another forum about winter tyres – and then continued to push it (the sinister turn I mentioned). Clearly, this is going to rub those who hold a different view the wrong way. and it does – several other people have disagreed with him both on the matter of winter tyres and on his insulting and forceful way of pushing it this year.
That poster has now made himself feel a lot better by dragging the subject – and I mean the part after it got sinister and personal – across to the other forum (the one in its death throes) and into a 2-day old thread which probably wouldn’t have got any more responses. And they wonder why people don’t post anymore when you have these “regulars” using the forums for their own petty purposes.
On the winter tyres topic, as I’ve said before: you don’t have to have winter tyres. In some cases, in some areas, at some times, some people might benefit from them. But that doesn’t mean everyone will.
We’ve managed quite well without them for many years – just as we’ve managed without huge 4x4s, other all-terrain vehicles, and snowploughs across 95% of the population, and that’s in spite of them being available for much of that time.
Trying to persuade people to switch to winter tyres is like trying to persuade an atheist that God exists, or vice versa.
Footnote: The same argument raged last year, and the year before that. Last winter was extremely mild and we had little snow or conditions which would have at least put up a good argument in favour of fitting winter tyres.
Instructors are always going on about teaching people safe driving for life. Maybe they should remember that the average person they teach is probably going to run their tyres almost bald to avoid the cost of new ones, so expecting them to fit winter tyres as an extra each year is unrealistic.
The false sense of security that fitting winter tyres might create among inexperienced drivers as a result of listening to over-enthusiastic converts who already have them on the tuition vehicle is worth considering.
The petition is now closed. It made 20,002 signatures in the end – an obvious sign that there is something that needs to be done about dangerous elderly drivers.
Unfortunately, it fell short of the 100,000 needed to get it debated in parliament, although by exceeding 10,000 it should get a comment. Ironically, a petition about the West Coast Franchise debacle has nearly 200,000! One about beer duty has over 100,000! Others of ridiculously low significance also have a disproportionate number.
As I’ve said before – and in the words of Kent Brockman – democracy simply doesn’t work.
Fortunately, as this story reveals, Cassie’s Law WILL be passed (sort of).
I saw this story in the newsfeeds. The original story from last year is here.
Cassie McCord was 16, and a student in Colchester. In February last year, she was hit – as she walked on the pavement – by an 87-year old driver. She died from her injuries later.
The driver, Colin Horsfall, had already been warned by police to stop driving after he went into the EXIT of a garage and ran into trees.
He failed an on-the-spot eye check during this particular incident, but refused to surrender his licence. Police have no powers to ban people immediately. Unbelievably, this happened just three days before he killed Cassie, so she’d obviously still have been alive today if Horsfall had been forcibly removed from the roads.
A verdict of unlawful killing was returned. Horsfall was injured in the incident and died – apparently from his injuries – several months later. This was recorded as accidental death. So, as well as deliberately continuing to drive when he was clearly completely incapable of doing so safely, he was also never brought to task over Cassie’s death.
Cassie’s mother, Jackie, has set up an e-petition asking that police be given the power to temporarily suspend drivers in such circumstances. It has the backing of the police, who also suggest that they should be allowed to confiscate vehicles as well. I fully agree. People like Colin Horsfall are absolute menaces. Horsfall was by no means unique.
You can view the petition and sign it here (or click the image). I urge everyone to do so – getting these types of dangerous drivers off the roads permanently is one of the best things the government could do.
EDIT: Note this story, too. An elderly driver killed an innocent motorist as a result of being unfit to drive through age .
And note this story where another elderly driver also got on the wrong side of the road and collided with two other cars.
And this one, where an elderly driver with defective eyesight injured a cyclist.
I burn off quite a few CDs and DVDs as backups of my work, and although I have previously used Nero I switched to ImgBurn a while back – it’s a free application unlike Nero, which costs an arm and a leg and is capable of filling an entire 1TB hard drive with crap during the installation process if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Recently, I started getting disk verification (initially) and power area calibration error messages (PACE). This was occurring with high-quality Verbatim disks, and on a clean installation of Windows 7 as well as an older one (my primary hard disk is partitioned for dual-booting).
I tried Nero again and it wouldn’t burn either. Everything pointed to the laser being on the way out on my optical drive – except that I have two of them, both Sony Optiarcs, and both were producing the same errors.
I did a bit of searching and it seems that this PACE message is quite common. Unfortunately, a solution was harder to find because, as is usual with the Internet, there is a hell of a lot of crap out there!
The worst solution I found was based on the advice that some optical disks, some optical disk drives, and some combinations of settings within ImgBurn (and so all burning software by implication) are mutually incompatible, so you would need to modify about a hundred different settings in the hope of finding the right combination. What nonsense!
However, I did eventually find a comment among all the melodramatic crap which suddenly made me go “a-ha!”
To cut a long story short, I went out and bought a DVD lens cleaner. I ran it on each optical drive and the change was immediately and dramatically apparent. As I write this I have actually run it five times on each drive – the small brush on the disk is noticeably dirty as a result.
When you stop and think, the average computer needs cleaning out at least once a year and often more frequently. This is especially true if you keep it in a bedroom (like mine) or dusty workplace. The optical drives are not sealed so some of that rubbish just has to get inside them and settle out on the laser lenses.
The PACE message relates to the fact that optical drives have to do a power test before they start burning, and carry on executing that test (called the running optimum power calibration, ROPC) as they burn. It is the drive itself which controls these, but the burning software has to trigger it.
In my case, all the stuff about firmware upgrades and tinkering with settings was obviously rubbish because both drives had been working perfectly – and both stopped working at roughly (but not exactly) the same time. There was the possibility that both had started to expire and were in their death throes, but that would still have been a coincidence.
If you have this problem, try cleaning your DVD lens first – and before doing anything dramatic, especially if it was all working fine before. You may have a dead optical drive – but it might just be dirty and in need of a clean.
Also on the subject of errors when using ImgBurn, if you get a lot of verification errors it is worth running a RAM test. Faulty RAM might be giving you problems.
Someone found the blog on the search term “is not looking over your shoulder a serious fault [on your] driving test?” I’ve written about it before in various topics, particularly the one where I explain the driving test report sheet. However, maybe a specific article is a good idea.
You won’t automatically fail for not looking over your shoulder – but you almost certainly will if you don’t look and someone is there.
If you don’t look and no one is coming it will probably get marked down as a driver fault (often referred to as a “minor” fault). But if you keep doing it it will be obvious to the examiner that you have a problem and it will end up being converted to a serious fault (marked in the “S” column on the test report).
If you don’t look and someone is coming – and you obviously haven’t seen them – then it will probably be marked as a serious fault (S).
If you don’t see someone and cause them to slow down in any way then it will be marked at least as a serious fault (S) and quite possibly a dangerous one (in the D column).
You are not allowed any S or D faults.
The final decision is the examiner’s, and I can only advise on what they are likely to do in any normal situation. Just remember that there is almost no excuse for missing someone who is approaching from behind when you intend to move off, and even less excuse for pulling out in front of them, so there’s no point trying to argue the toss.
In rare cases a situation might arise that the examiner decides the new driver couldn’t reasonably be expected to have handled differently and they may be generous – but as I say, these are rare cases, and much depends on how you reacted – did you stop or did you keep going, for example? After all, if you’re expecting to be driving around with your mates tomorrow you need to be able to deal with just about anything safely.
The latest DSA Highway Code advice – this one is about driving in fog:
When driving in fog you should:
- use your lights as required
- keep a safe distance behind the vehicle in front. Rear lights can give a false sense of security
- be able to pull up well within the distance you can see clearly. This is particularly important on motorways and dual carriageways, as vehicles are travelling faster
- use your windscreen wipers and demisters
- beware of other drivers not using headlights
- not accelerate to get away from a vehicle which is too close behind you
- check your mirrors before you slow down. Then use your brakes so that your brake lights warn drivers behind you that you are slowing down
- stop in the correct position at a junction with limited visibility and listen for traffic. When you are sure it is safe to emerge, do so positively and do not hesitate in a position that puts you directly in the path of approaching vehicles.
Rule 235
I’ve mentioned before the doomed advertising Heinz employed to market its Tomato Soup. I thought they’d listened – it hasn’t been on for months – but it seems I was wrong. Partly, at any rate.
What Heinz failed to appreciate was that the fault lay with the advertising agency it was using. You see, when an advertising company gets an idea into its head, it milks it dry. To make matters worse, others often copy it, and before you know it you’ve got people whistling tunelessly in every bloody new ad that comes along (whistling is unfortunately still in vogue, particularly among the lesser advertising agencies who have caught on to it last and who are busy trying to market third-rate products for lesser retailers). Or you get annoying whispering adverts like the Secret Escapes one – whispering has been picked up by a number of companies as a way of selling crap in greater quantities (although it has to be said that the Army did it first a couple of years ago in an attempt to get people to sign up in order to increase their chances of being killed by going into active duty*).
A certain high street retailer has pictures of ugly people on the side of its lorries – wearing face cream, or blowing their noses. It seems Heinz is now milking that one dry itself. In its latest ad it has an ugly woman doing all kinds of childish things, and then slurping a spoonful of tomato soup – which is then stuck all over her lips.
When will people get it into their heads that wearing food only appeals to weirdoes who do internet searches on XXX sites, or women whose brains have turned to jelly as a result of childbirth, and who think that babies covered in pureed vegetables is “cute”?
* For people out there who weren’t in the queue when senses of humour were being handed out, this is a joke and not a criticism of any of our forces personnel.