Diary Of An ADI

I found this story on Manx Radio.

From April this year, those sitting the theory test in IOM will have to do a computerised section on spotting hazards. The legislation has yet to be approved by Tynwald – that’s the IOM Parliament – but April isn’t far away, so this looks like it is a long way towards being implemented.

The test would be administered by the Department of Education and Children.

The HPT (Hazard Perception Test) was not popular over here, though personally I never had a problem with it and I still don’t. It’s definitely better than nothing at all, and it makes people think. In fact, most of the moaning came from people who couldn’t do it – which doesn’t automatically make it wrong, does it?

This report in the Louth Leader online newspaper says that the local test centre could be re-opened in an office in the local leisure centre.

I looked up the story and discovered that Louth was scheduled to close in January this year. The nearest alternative test centre was 17 miles away at Grimsby. Typically, a load of ADIs opposed it and came up with some ridiculous estimates of how much extra it would cost pupils to take their tests there – something like their life savings, an extra 20 hours of lessons (that one is a real claim, by the way), and several body organs. These claims were grossly exaggerated, as usual – particularly the one about how many extra hours it would take.

Naturally, someone in local government is anxious to make a name for themselves and is fighting the corner. Cllr Pauline Watson is even offering to pay the rent on the room at the leisure centre for a year – a gesture which I’m certain isn’t intended to try and belittle the DSA.

I wonder if Cllr Watson has considered the extra risks associated with having learners driving around a leisure centre, where I would imagine there are kids? The Meridian centre has a swimming pool, a leisure pool with flume, and child care facilities (i.e. it’s a creche) – amongst other things. If it’s anywhere near the same as the leisure centres around here, there will be kids everywhere.

And Cllr Watson wants driving school cars hanging around?

The best part is that these ADIs have said:

It is standard practice to have lessons on the roads used by test centres

Actually, it might be common  practice, but it is far from being standard. If people can drive – if they’re taught properly – they don’t need to spend much time around the test centre at all.

The idea of driving school cars messing about in a leisure centre car park – it’s “standard practice”, remember – makes your toes curl! These people don’t mess about, you know. There would be so many of them crawling over the place that there wouldn’t be anywhere for the centre users to park.

Even if Cllr Watson hasn’t considered this, I would be very surprised if the DSA didn’t either.

The Sun has its own unique angle on the story reported below. Apparently, girls are driven crazy by the new insurance laws.

Young women drivers face paying up to £4,300 more a year to cover their cars following the ruling

It says. Well, you’ve got to take the rough with the smooth. If you want equal pay – irrespective of whether or not you have equal skills – you’ve got to expect equal bills and expenses, too.

Women under 26, who are considered ‘safer’ drivers by insurance companies than their male counterparts will have their rates hitched 25 per cent by 12 December 2012.

I’ll repeat what I said in the last post on this topic: women drivers have accidents .

Once and for all, let’s stop pretending women are perfect out there on the roads. They make mistakes – different ones to men due to their biological spatial awareness problems – and they cause problems on the roads.

On my way to a lesson today a female driver stopped abruptly in the middle of a junction on a 40mph road in free-moving traffic – completely free-moving – to flash a white van turning right (he was waiting in the designated right turn lane). It forced me to both brake to a stop in front of the white line and worry that the lights would change and trigger the camera. She hadn’t a clue what was going on behind her. The white van had no right of way whatsoever, but she gave it to him unnecessarily and caused potentially serious problems,

Then this afternoon on a roundabout, a woman driver did what bad drivers do and remained in the right hand lane as long as she could (all along a long boulevard) to turn right, and then swung across into the other lane (also going right) at the last moment. She, too, hadn’t a clue what was going on in that lane or behind her. She should have stayed in lane and merged – not try to slam into other road users.

In both cases, the only reason an accident didn’t happen was the other driver – in this case, me.

The point here is not that only women do this. The point is that women do it as well, so stop bleating about this perfectly sensible change to the insurance laws. The only reason women have had it so good for so long is as a result of positive discrimination designed to swing the scales away from men. The problem was, the scales swung too far – now they’re swinging back a little.

Just saw the newsflash on BBC – the EU has ruled that gender CANNOT be taken into account when calculating insurance premiums.

It will apply from 1 December 2012.

I’ll edit this post as the story comes through properly.

OK, here’s the first BBC report about it.

Some of the comments are interesting – and laughable. This one from someone called ‘compliancegeek’ especially so:

What a ludicrous ruling. How can insurers effectively price risk and how can consumers get a fair deal if insurers can’t take critical factors into account? It’s like saying a 60 year old driver with a perfect no claims record should pay the same a 17 year old new driver!!

Indeed, most of the comments seem to make an automatic connection with age. Oh, and bananas, of course. They’re simply incapable of looking at this logically (and this seems especially true of all the indignant women out there).

New drivers are ALL capable of having accidents – men AND women. Those who have them will see their insurance skyrocket (in the true sense of the word). People really need to stop pretending to themselves that women don’t have accidents or drive like idiots. Some of them do, and that’s why they should be paying the same premiums as everyone else.

Likewise, not ALL young males have accidents – it’s just as “unfair” to sting them with higher premiums as it apparently is to sting women with them. A uniform approach is the answer.

With age comes experience – and lower premiums.

Another Autoblog article reports that its readers have criticised the use of HID headlights.

HID stands for high intensity discharge. HID (or xenon) lamps are more efficient than other types and can be made smaller. They require a high-voltage pulse to “ignite” and they run typically with an 85 volt supply, so that means a power pack – or “ballast”.

The companies who make them, and those who fit them, claim that they are more eco-friendly than halogen or tungsten bulbs. The bulbs themselves may well be – but the additional electronics will have a carbon footprint which simply doesn’t occur with the other types. I wish people would tell the whole story when they start talking eco-babble.

The only problem I have with HID bulbs is that out of the corner of your eye they frequently appear blue (they have a bluish tinge anyway, but sometimes it can be reddish depending on the angle you’re seeing them from), and I sometimes have to do a double-take to make sure it isn’t an emergency vehicle. Personally, I feel that something which takes peoples eyes off the road like that could have safety implications.

The report quotes the AA, who think that people may be getting “dangerous” mixed up with “don’t like”. After all, HIDs are most commonly fitted to high-end cars (or retro-fitted to pratmobiles). I think they’re probably right – Autoblog simply ran a survey, and these are notorious for producing opinion- instead of fact-based results. Just because people “think” something is dangerous doesn’t mean it is.

The article also deals with the issue of daytime running lights. Again, I don’t have a personal gripe, but I think the EU argument about them being safer is flawed. When only a few people drive around with their lights on (motorcyclists and cyclists) you tend to see them. When everyone rides around with them on then you just get used to lots of lights.