Well done to Joe, who passed today first time with 4 driver faults.
I’ve never come across anyone so quiet, so it was hard to gauge whether he was happy about his result or not. I think he was.
Incidentally, one of his faults was for being in the right hand lane inappropriately. There’s an article coming on that subject…
Well done to Daniel, who passed today with 7 driver faults.
I sat in on this one, and winced when you did that parallel park – it wasn’t the method we normally use, but it got you in far enough to be able to do a final correction… but then when the examiner asked “are you happy with that?” I could have killed you when you said “yes”. You had to reverse in order to get out again, and he was giving you a lifeline to fix it! Still, it was only a driver fault.
And when we came round the Colwick Loop Road roundabout at the end, you definitely followed that bloody learner in front who also went needlessly into the right hand lane. I have never let you do that on any roundabout without having a go at you about it, and you knew it was wrong once you’d done it! That learner was also on test and had already pulled over on a bus stop (she failed) so she was hardly a good example to follow.
Joking aside, though, a good result. You drove really well. And it also means my pass rate for the year is 70% from nearly 30 tests.
Further to the story about birch pollen “ripping” paint off cars – and you wouldn’t believe how many hits on that exact search phrase I’ve had – mine is still firmly attached to the car and I haven’t felt ill or anything (I am the first born son).
It looks like the Angel of Death gave the UK a miss after all, so I can only assume it was all media paranoia again.
This is a very old story and all links in it are now dead and so removed. And DSA is now DVSA, of course.
When I saw the headline, my first thought was “about time”. But as soon as I started reading the story in This is South Devon I realised that it wasn’t all it seemed.
When you drive (or teach people to drive) for a living, other motorists behaving stupidly, dangerously, and arrogantly is a major annoyance. One of the worst groups has to be taxi drivers, and it really makes you wonder how the hell many of them get through their taxi test.
The DSA’s website says:
The test is more demanding than the practical test taken by learner drivers, and has elements that relate specifically to driving a taxi or PHV.
So how is it that so many taxi drivers don’t seem to have a clue how to drive safely or with other road users in mind? If they’ve been tested, it can only be deliberate the way they behave.
You can be driving behind a taxi and it will stop – literally stop dead – to pick up a fare. It won’t care if it is blocking the road completely or who is behind it – it will still stop without any warning. You may come across one that has blocked a narrow residential road as you turn round a blind bend (blind bends and other danger areas mean nothing to taxis).
They will stop during the rush hour on yellow lines, on zig-zags at crossings, in restricted stopping zones, or anywhere else that is convenient to them (an individual) irrespective of the mayhem it causes to thousands of people trying to negotiate the rush hour while they block off part of the road – and then pull away as soon as they’re ready to go, forcing everyone to stop.
They pull off without warning and will happily block half of the road while they emerge into free-flowing traffic which has no reason to stop for them other than to avoid a collision. They sit two abreast (blocking off half the road) talking to each other outside their HQ (anyone who doesn’t believe me should go past Southside Cars in Clifton – daytime or night, it won’t make any difference to the taxis). Hazard lights are a taxi’s standard method of communicating that it is illegally parked half on the pavement, straddling double yellow lines.
Taxis will drive at a speed to suit them – very slowly when between jobs, usually in the right-hand lanes; very fast when on a job. When driving on a job, overtaking on the inside, lane changing, and cutting up is mandatory. If a call comes through while they’re sauntering along or pulling away at traffic lights very slowly, then a U-turn can be carried out in any location and in any volume of traffic using any method that occurs to the driver at that particular moment in time.
The manoeuvre will come as a big surprise to everyone else, because taxis don’t use signals (except occasionally for hazard lights when they are within 500m of where their sat nav has told them they should be and they’re looking for a house number). The idea of driving a few metres in order to do a turn in the road or a corner reverse safely – or going around the block – is not something which a taxi driver is capable of considering. It has to be an immediate and often illegal or dangerous turn right there and then (a favoured manoeuvre outside Southside Cars when a call comes through is the U-turn in the road on zig-zags, usually misjudged (so becoming a turn in the road), and often involving going around a pedestrian island the wrong way depending on where they were parked).
Bearing all this in mind, I was thinking that someone in Devon had got wise to all this and started to do something about it.
It turned out to be three drivers parking a bit outside the overflowing taxi rank, or in a bus bay. In other words, bureaucratic codswallop.
No, really?
One more statement of the bleeding obvious to round off the month – though there is still a day to go yet – from The Journal in Ireland.
Apparently, in this hot news the RSA warns that using your mobile when driving results in an increased risk of collision. Well, knock me down with a feather!
The article also says that driver distraction is “thought” to play a role in 20-30% of all road collisions and using your mobile can increase the risk by four times. I hate it when numerical data are linked by words like “thought” – because they become the kind of data you can’t process with a computer. However, the unintentional implication from this is that sometimes it is OK to use the phone because it doesn’t always play a role.
If you’re going to come out with such statements of the obvious, at least state the most obvious thing of all and be done with it: doing anything other than concentrating on driving is dangerous.
And introduce suitable penalties for doing it. Forget silly videos and “awareness” courses. Bring back darkened rooms and lengths of rubber hose.
The Lennox Herald seems to think some sort of about-turn has been made, or some victory achieved over the “closure” of the Dumbarton test centre.
Let’s just touch base with reality for a moment. This story started when Dumbarton instructors staged a protest over something that existed only in their imaginations. The DSA said quite clearly:
DSA plans to continue to provide driving tests in Dumbarton. There are no plans to transfer testing provision to Anniesland or elsewhere.
Testing in Dumbarton has been operating three days a week on a trial basis, but this will be reviewed and can be increased if there is sufficient demand for more days.
Candidates can still book tests slots in Dumbarton for the days when testing is taking place.
It only went this far because the lease ran out on the previous site, and it was looking for another. This new article says the same thing:
The Driving Standards Agency (DSA) had only been operating three days a week since moving to a temporary base in the town’s Burgh Hall.
But it gets a little more curious if you read into what a local councillor says:
The DSA will still be based in the Burgh Hall while actively seeking permanent premises, but we’ve given a commitment that they can have the hall for five days instead of three for the same fee.
So it appears that part of the problem was that the local council was either not offering the premises for five days, or it was trying to charge too high a fee for that length of time. Whatever the case, a large part of the problem seems to not have been the DSA’s fault.
They’re still going on as if the test centre could move away in Dumbarton, though. They still can’t understand what the DSA said:
DSA plans to continue to provide driving tests in Dumbarton . There are no plans to transfer testing provision to Anniesland or elsewhere.
However, it will surely pass into ADI folklore that the DSA tried to close down the Dumbarton test centre, force people to travel hundreds of miles, but was pushed into an embarrassing climbdown because a small group of instructors held a “protest convoy”.
How’s this for manipulation of the facts for political purposes? This is Cheshire reports that the DSA is to trial conducting driving tests from hotels or council-owned buildings in Warrington. The test centre there closed down three years ago as a new MPTC was opened in St Helens.
For the record, St Helens is 10 miles away from Warrington. This morning, I travelled 11 miles to pick up a pupil. For the hard of thinking out there, that means he lives roughly 10 miles away from the test centre. It’s no big deal, really. Not like it is to David Mowat MP in Warrington. He said:
The last Labour Government took the ridiculous decision to scrap the popular and well-used Driving Test Centre in Warrington based on an over-zealous interpretation of an EU Directive.
I understand that the DSA is now looking at reinstating services in some parts of the country, possibly including Warrington.
Mowat is a Conservative if you hadn’t already worked it out.
Councillor Paul Campbell lays it on even thicker:
Local Instructors saw their business disappear and local learners saw their pass rates fall as they were forced to travel longer distances to drive on unfamiliar roads.
It’s 10 MILES for heaven’s sake! You’d think it was on the other side of the world. Instructors should be covering that area anyway if they’re doing their jobs properly, because 10 miles is local.
Anyway, poking through the political nonsense, this is not a backdown of any kind – it is a new idea that would allow tests to be carried out in places they never have been before. Peripatetic examiners, if you like. MPTCs are still there, and so they should be.
I mentioned a week or two ago that Aviva had put the RAC up for sale. They’re asking a pretty penny for it, as well. An offer of around £1 billion would secure an immediate sale.
Aviva paid £1.1 billion six years ago – but they also took on existing debts and liabilities for pensions. The article here says that they may have to keep hold of £300 million worth of pension liabilties when they sell.
When Aviva bought the RAC the deal included BSM and Auto Windscreens – both of which were sold off for something between £500-600 million.
Let’s just remind ourselves what has happened to BSM (bought by Aviva, screwed, sold, screwed again, sold again) and Auto Windscreens (in administration). I’m not sure how well Lex Vehicle Leasing (also sold) is doing.
I’m sure there is a lesson to be learnt here about buyouts, particularly from those who have now lost their jobs.
A nice article in The Spoof. It just about sums up the way I feel about the Royal Wedding.
As they say, we’re shipping the cranks in from all four corners of the globe – and that’s like we didn’t have enough of our own already. Mind you, the foreign ones are not as bad as our homegrown ones. People from overseas (well, apart from the Americans) are just over here to see a spectacle – they’re tourists.
Our lot (and the Americans) are a few olives short of a pizza.
They’ve been sleeping out on the pavement for days already. At any other time you’d get arrested for that. Clad in cheap plastic Union Jack hats and waving flags left over from England’s attempt to play football at last years World Cup (and yes, we all know those flags are overstock, otherwise they’d be Union Jacks), you can’t help wonder how they go to the toilet – though I suspect it involves swapping bags over in many cases.
We’ve had weeks of it – and there are weeks still to come as the paperazzi follow them on honeymoon, and then the newspapaers get in trouble for going too far. Again. And after that will be their “first” Christmas as a married couple at Balmoral, their “first” Royal engagement as a married couple, their “first” (this makes me shiver) trip to the USA as a married couple, and so on.
Even now, the BBC news is rattling on about it – no mention of the impending Biblical Plague (aka “high pollen count”) which is due to sandblast the entire country anytime now. Obviously, it’s far more important to keep interviewing dysfunctional Americans about why they are here.
When you look at it, all it is is some bloke and his bird getting hitched.
Last week I was on a lesson and there was a car decked out in flags, and the silly woman driving it was wearing a red and white wig, and red and white everything else (so far as I could tell without getting intimate). And the number of houses with flags hanging outside is surprising in this day and age.
I’m working tomorrow. I hope I don’t get held up by any bloody street parties.
I have also managed to resist the temptation to use the obvious sort of graphic to go with this article.
Just like one of the warnings visited on the Egyptians at the time of Moses, according to the Express we are due a visit from the Angel of Death!
Basically, some pollen is possibly going to blow over the UK from Europe.
According to the Express – and all the numpties who have picked up the story and are busy repeating it:
The truth of the matter is that due to the dry weather and prevailing winds, pollen levels will be high over the next few days. And Birch pollen is more abrasive than it is acidic.That’s all. But it is boring when you put it like that..
I mean, let’s face facts here. Last year, half of Iceland fell on us after that Eyjafjallajökull (I love than name – no one can pronounce it) volcano erupted, and that ash was lots more abrasive than Birch pollen. Every year, a whole truck load of the Sahara gets dumped on us, and we know how abrasive sand is. Heaven knows what else comes over on the wind that isn’t newsworthy. All you get is a load of crap on the car first thing in the morning, and that’s hardly Biblical, is it?
Oh, yeah. And can anyone remember the last time something like this happened that meant the paint spontaneously fell off every car in the UK?