Diary Of An ADI - A Driving Instructor's Blog

Test Pass: 25/10/2011

26/10/2011

Well done Richard, who passed with just 5 driver faults yesterday. It was worth it in the end, wasn’t it? Hopefully, this will give you that extra step you wanted in your chosen career.

Also, take on board what the examiner said at the end and consider doing Pass Plus. The test – passing it – is just the first stage of a lifelong learning curve, and any extra training at any point in your career (your chosen career path will almost certainly require you to do it) is going to be beneficial. Pass Plus is an excellent step if it is delivered properly, and we’ve only ever driven from your house to West Bridgford or near the test centre (there’s only so much driving you can do in 1 hour when you’re preparing for the test).

Oswaldtwistle Danger Driver to Appear on Channel 5 Show

26/10/2011

DOAADI

ADI, Bad Drivers, Movies & TV, News

Channel 5’s new series, Dangerous Drivers’ School, is attracting a lot of traffic. Even local rags are using it to get publicity – like The Citizen.

It reports that John Thompson from Oswaldtwistle (it’s near Accrington in Lancashire) is to appear on the show. Let me just correct The Citizen for a moment – Thompson has ALREADY appeared on the show, it just hasn’t been aired yet. If he’s learnt anything, he should be demonstrating it now.

Thompson, who is 35, is described as “speed-loving” with a need to “grow up”. It was his wife’s idea – not his – that he appear on the show.

Thompson boasts:

It was the wife’s decision really. I was speeding quite a lot – on the motorway, I would go up to 90 or 110mph…

…I’m a courier driver and I had gotten into some bad habits…

Mmmmm. You don’t need to appear on a TV show to miraculously learn the law. The article quotes the AA instructor who was involved, but it doesn’t say anything about Thompson having changed his attitude.

It’s ironic really that that last blog story was about some idiot trying to complete a 70-mile journey in less than an hour, and this one involves a courier driver who has to get things from one place to another as quickly as possible (I see courier vans most of the day so I know exactly what goes on).

Worth reading the comments at the end of the report, too. Seems like a few people out there have the true measure of it.

Lincolnshire Learner in Fatal Accident

26/10/2011

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ADI, News

An incredible story, this one, from This is Lincolnshire.

Piotr Koch was a learner who had only had six driving lessons. He agreed to drive Diana Priede and her boyfriend from Boston to East Midlands Airport after her arranged driver let her down – a distance of 70 miles.

He had an hour in which to complete the journey.

If you wrote this as a script for a disaster movie or Casualty episode it would get thrown out for being too repetitive or unoriginal. You can guess what happened next.

Koch’s satnav shows that he was exceeding the speed limit for the whole of the 50% of the journey he had so far completed, and was averaging 80mph. At this point, Koch veered off the road on a bend, overreacted and spun across the road into a tree on the other side, and then rolled the car. Priede was killed and her boyfriend seriously injured. It doesn’t say what injuries Koch suffered.

Koch was driving on a provisional licence, had no insurance, no L plates, and was unsupervised. He had been stopped twice by police in the previous month for driving without a licence (for which he was fined each time).

He was jailed for three years and banned for six (I guess it was “only” three years because he admitted guilt).

I don’t want to sound unsympathetic – but I’m going to anyway. Diana Priede and her boyfriend are almost as guilty some ways (if they knew Koch was not fully licensed, of course). It is her attitude towards this sort of thing that makes people like Koch think that what they do is all right. Koch’s arrogance and stupidity are merely symptoms of the real problem.

Tragic, of course, but let’s not keep getting tied up with technical guilt. The real malady is much deeper than that, and although Koch might be technically guilty, anyone prepared to benefit from his lawbreaking must share some of the blame.

BBC’s The One Show on Tyres

24/10/2011

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ADI, Movies & TV, News

You can catch it on iPlayer for the usual limited time. The One Show on BBC One tonight had a segment about driving on bald tyres. It starts at 2½ minutes in.

The programme says that around 60% of cars seen by garages (well, one in Northampton, so it’s reasonable to extrapolate a little) have at least one defective tyre. The claim is made that people are leaving it longer before replacing tyres due to the adverse economy we’re currently experiencing.

There’s nothing wrong with the segment overall, but it makes the highly misleading and erroneous claim that if your tyres fail the “20p test” they are illegal. I mentioned this test in several recent posts (for example here, and then again here. Oh, and here).

The One Show is absolutely wrong about this.

The legal minimum tread depth is 1.6mm across the middle ¾ of the tyre and all around the edge. The Highway Code confirms this:

Tyres. Tyres MUST be correctly inflated to the vehicle manufacturer’s specification for the load being carried. Always refer to the vehicle’s handbook or data. Tyres should also be free from certain cuts and other defects.

Cars, light vans and light trailers MUST have a tread depth of at least 1.6 mm across the central three-quarters of the breadth of the tread and around the entire circumference.

Motorcycles, large vehicles and passenger-carrying vehicles MUST have a tread depth of at least 1 mm across three-quarters of the breadth of the tread and in a continuous band around the entire circumference.

Mopeds should have visible tread.

Be aware that some vehicle defects can attract penalty points.

Indirectly, this is all the fault of the Cumbria Police and the media morons who reported their blitz on dangerous tyres ahead of this winter (that first article I wrote which mentioned the “20p test”). The rim on a 20p is about 2.5mm wide, and Cumbria Police were obviously using this as an overkill method of warning people who drive in the harsh Cumbrian winters on the tricky Cumbrian roads about the risks they were taking as their tyres wore lower and lower (driving in Cumbria in winter is not quite the same as driving in London or any other city during the same season).

To measure 1.6mm you can use the row of dots on a 10p piece (or buy a proper tool from Halfords for a couple of quid).

The One Show goes on to suggest that a tyre failing the “20p test” is dangerous – even saying that anything less than 3mm is illegal, and carrying out an unscientific test to prove their incorrect ideas.

Yes, we know that the lower the tread, the longer the stopping distance, but the fact remains that 1.6mm is still the legal minimum – not 3mm, as the BBC is falsely claiming. And although garages might refuse to MoT a car with less than 3mm of tread on its tyres, that’s not the same as them being illegal.

EDIT: This article is already attracting a lot of hits. A reader has commented that the car with the “dodgy tyres” doesn’t skid into the boxes – it rolls into them. This suggests that the test was perhaps rigged to give more dramatic results.

Obviously, we only have The One Show’s word that the tyres were at the tread depth the woman’s car had. Speculation, of course, but it makes you think.

Of course, the stopping distance is best with new tyres. But it gets greater with ANY amount of wear. The question is: at what point does it become dangerous? The law says below 1.6mm, and not 3mm.

Women Spend More on Driving Lessons

23/10/2011

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ADI, News

This is an old post.

A very confusing news release from the Press Association says that women take more lessons to pass their tests than men [link dead].

In itself, that is no big deal, but the article goes on to say that women take “an average of 22 driving lessons compared with a figure of 16 for men”. It doesn’t define a “driving lesson” (i.e. how long are these lessons?) And it then goes on to confuse the situation even more by saying that 20% or men and 10% of women don’t take lessons from an instructor.

I teach people as quickly and efficiently as I can, and I can assure you that the average number of hours is not 16 or 22 for men and women, respectively. My fastest ever learner (female) did it in 17.5 hours, and I’ve had a few (male and female) manage it in between 23 and 29 hours, but most take 30+ hours. So I can only assume that the “lessons” referred to are 2 hour ones.

The whole story is based on a survey by Co-operative Insurance (at least it doesn’t pretend to be “research” this time – that’s what these things are usually sold as). A Co-op spokesman says:

Our findings show that men tend to need less practice before passing their test, although this doesn’t necessarily make them the better drivers.

In fact, because women tend to take more time learning to drive they are likely to have built up more experience of the road before they pass their test.

This generalisation is highly misleading, since some women pass quicker than some men, and many people – male and female – are still rubbish drivers, even after 100 hours of lessons, because that’s how they choose to behave. In addition, what people say about themselves (and their driving) is hardly something that should be taken as gospel.

The only widespread source of data for how many lessons people took is the people themselves!

And the Co-op results are similar to these done by ~~confused.com~~ a couple of years ago, although the angle is different.

DSA Alert: Opinions on Independent Driving Sought

21/10/2011

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ADI, Driving Tests, DSA

In another alert, the DSA is looking for help in evaluating independent driving (ID) a year after it was introduced. In it the DSA says that it wants to understand:

how learners prepare for their practical test
opinions about the changes

I can imagine already how a number of fossil instructors and prehistoric organisations out there are preparing to resubmit their umpteen-thousand word theses on the subject of why ID is going to bring the civilisation as we know it to an abrupt end – theses which they have repeated mercilessly for two years or more now – in response to this request.

In actual fact, independent driving has been a major success for the DSA and for 99.9% of driving test candidates who have had to do it. There is absolutely no question over this at all.

As for the other 0.1%? Well, they seem to comprise the entire pupil bank of the anti-DSA whingers and – in all honesty – appear to exist in theory only. No one has actually had any problems doing the ID phase, other than what you’d expect from people who aren’t ready to drive unaided just yet, and who fail their tests.

EDIT 23/10/2011: I was on a Pass Plus session with a pupil yesterday (22/10/2011) and she told me she’d received the email too and had sent her response back. She, too, thought that ID was a great idea.

I suspect those who have persisted in kicking up an unnecessary fuss over ID are going to find themselves in just about the tiniest minority possible if the opinions of test candidates are also being sought.

Despatch: October 2011

21/10/2011

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ADI, DSA

The October edition of Despatch is now available. Click the logo to download a copy.

Articles include a review of Independent Driving one year after its introduction, a bit about updating your paper licence if you are a professional driver, coverage of the new revision materials for the theory test, advice on how to use the ADI online services, and some interesting stuff about the hazard perception test (HPT) and plans to revamp the clips.

DSA Alert: New THINK! Campaign for Children

21/10/2011

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ADI, DSA, Education, News

An email alert from the DSA reports on a new THINK! campaign aimed at making children, well… think before crossing the road.

The campaign cost £700,000 (it uses those animations with ugly characters, like the Lloyds Bank ads) and will be run on TV and in cinemas. It’s aimed at 6-11 year olds and “spells out the dangers of not taking care on the roads”. It emphasises the importance of crossing safely and making sure you can be seen when you’re out in the dark.

Is it just me who thinks that the real problem is being totally ignored, and actually used as a tool to make matters even worse?

Although there are reasons why 6-11 year olds would be out after dark (i.e. on their way home from school in winter), there is no mention of the fact that most of them will still be out after 9pm – indeed, out until the local off licence or chip shop closes and there’s nowhere else to stand smoking, spitting, and swearing whilst blocking the door with their BMX bikes or attempts to skateboard.

And what self-respecting hoodie is going to wear anything other than a filthy black or grey top with baggy black trousers. How many BMX bikes even have a location for a light, let alone have one fitted?

And how can you expect any 6-11 year old to know any better when their parents – little more than children themselves in many cases – behave in exactly the same way?

The problem is the parents – it is they who should be receiving the education, not the kids.

I’d also point out to Mike Penning that, in spite of his best rhetoric, it isn’t anything new. Over the years we’ve had dozens of them – all of them worked – and once upon a time 100,000 children or more took a cycling proficiency test. These days, they just inherit a frontal lobotomy from their parents.

Dangerous Drivers’ School on Channel 5

19/10/2011

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ADI, Bad Drivers, Movies & TV, News

NOTE: This post is from 2011. A new series began in 2013.

Well, I watched the first episode and it was reasonably interesting. You can watch the programme on Channel 5’s website (presumably for a limited time, so get it while it’s hot!)

It was touching to see Sarah get over her fear of motorways, and great to see the other woman gain confidence. But Lewis was typical of the problem on the roads today as far as many young male drivers is concerned. Still, at least he will have the comfort of knowing that he appeared on TV and initially came across as a prat – and left it looking an even bigger one.

The same might be said of a few other people. You see, his instructor said on the show that she couldn’t believe he had a licence after seeing him drive for the first time. It was obvious what she meant. But not to some people. Here’s a typical – and wholly expected – comment:

Does this imply that the ADI did not check his licence before starting the session?

The rest of the series looks interesting. Next episode looks like featuring a racerboy who eats, drinks, and uses his mobile phone at the same time whilst driving at speed without touching the wheel with his hands, and with his girlfriend in the car. Lewis the prat didn’t seem to mind driving hands-free, either.

Surprisingly, the morning after, there are actually some sensible comments being put up on the forums. You still get the one or two complete tossers (absolutely no better than Lewis, but in their own field) who insist on trying to find fault with either the female ADI who was featured, or the driving school involved – but these people usually have a track record of this sort of thing (i.e. franchise-haters, cheap-lesson haters, not even qualified ADIs, and so on).

Episode 2 reviewed here.

New Channel 5 TV Series about Driving Instructors

18/10/2011

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ADI, Bad Drivers, Movies & TV, News

This is a very, very old article.

Well, it’s about individuals with poor driving skills taking lessons to bring them up to scratch – but the people who find this blog looking for info about the show won’t be interested in that sort of minor detail. It involves driving instructors, and that’s enough.

Starting on Wednesday, 19th October, the Channel 5 series is called Dangerous Drivers’ School, and on its web page it says that “three experienced driving instructors buckle up with a collection of dangerous drivers”.

In the first episode, a pretty boy club promoter is the subject under scrutiny… or is he?

What Channel 5’s site doesn’t say is that the instructors involved in delivering the training are all from the AA, and this automatically puts them at a huge disadvantage as far as any other ADI watching the show is concerned. But it would have been the same wherever the instructors were from – any large national driving school, or independent is grist for the “professional” ADI’s mill.

You see, it is one of the requirements of being a “professional” driving instructor that you find fault with all other instructors – especially if they’re from a national driving school, even one of the reputable ones. Of course, it is also a requirement of being a “professional” ADI that you firmly believe and proselytize the belief that there are no reputable national schools out there. A third “professional” requirement is that you make badly worded, confusing innuendoes (masquerading as wit) whenever an opportunity like this arises. This occasion is no exception:

…Yep………………..I shall advise all my friends to go to the AA for free and not use my expert services for which they would have to pay…

…How can independants [sic] thrive when the big companies have a hold of the market…>

…I wonder how many non AA instructors will ask for a free lesson from the experts..!

…I am sure that AA instructors would be glad and happy to help these poor souls…

And this is before the first episode is aired. Ironically, some of those comments are from people who either used a franchise to get them to where they are today, or who are still with one (albeit, not the AA).

The AA has some more information on its own website. It apparently runs a course designed for inexperienced drivers (not learners) – this course has been available for several years (I remember that it caused a stir among the unwashed masses when it was launched), and is not new. Nowadays, it appears to be free through the AA Charitable Trust according to that website (I’m not sure what restrictions might apply, though).

But you see, any driving school out there could offer something similar if it wanted to. In fact, with so many of them offering stupid lesson prices and slitting their own throats into the bargain, you sometimes wonder why they don’t anyway. Admittedly, Channel 5 isn’t likely to be sniffing around trying to make expensive TV shows involving “Binkie’s School of Motoring” in the Scottish Highlands (I made that up). So names like the AA, BSM, and so on are automatically at an advantage.

But forfeiting any advantage from the corporate name is the free choice an ADI makes when he or she decides to go independent. You can’t go solo and take the name with you, no matter how nice it would be to do so.

Certainly, knowing how other ADIs think, you wouldn’t catch me appearing on TV doing my job (not that Channel 5 or anyone else would want me to, of course). It would be the equivalent of leaping out of a World War I trench in broad daylight on your own, wearing fluorescent green clothes, and making a lot of noise as you rushed the enemy line. Bloody stupid!

And I can’t wait to see how this develops once the show is aired and those who haven’t yet realised it’s the AA involved suddenly wise up.

As for the show, I’ll watch it – but I’m always sceptical about these things. Why? Well, if I were a crap driver, would I really want to be on TV telling everyone about it? Would I – in the process – think it wise to admit to breaking the law or endangering others?

On the other hand, if I were a complete prat with an ego problem, anxious to be on TV, would I ignore all that and leap at the chance? The answer is quite clear on that one.

That’s why I’m sceptical. The programme is quite possibly more about the complex personal issues of the people appearing, not about getting better at driving.

EDIT 22/3/2012: I understand that a new series is in the pipeline – sounds like it will be shown later this year.