I picked a pupil up this afternoon. She ran through her cockpit drill, then we did the summary of the previous lesson. The ensuing minute or two went like this:
Me: OK, drive off when you’re ready.
[Readjusts seat]
Me: What’s the matter?
She: I feel like I’m too close.
Me: OK. When you’re ready, off we go.
[Sets gas, moves left foot a bit, looks all around, handbrake off… nothing happens]
Me: Hold on a moment. Have you forgotten anything?
[Starts to readjust seat again]
Me: No, it’s not your seat. Set the gas and find the bite.
[Sets gas, moves left foot a bit, looks all around…]
Me: Have you got the bite? Try again… go on, raise your toes until you feel it…
[Sets gas, raises foot a bit… raises it some more… then some more… then eventually all the way up… no movement of the car]
Me: Right, so what does that tell you?
[Looks all around her feet and the steering wheel… possibly considering readjusting the seat again]
She: Ummm…
Me: Look at the gear lever.
She: [screams] Oh, I feel so stupid. I was having a blonde moment.
[We’re still in neutral]
She’s actually a decent learner driver, but everyone has these aberrations occasionally. Except men.
Vehicle Registration Certificate becomes more secure
A new, more secure V5C Vehicle Registration Certificate will be introduced from 15th August 2010.
The new registration certificate is being introduced following the theft of a number of blank certificates in 2006. The aim is to reduce the risks to motorists of buying a stolen or cloned vehicle.
The new documents will be issued from 15th August 2010 for all newly registered vehicles and when there are changes to an existing registration, such as a change of keeper or address.
From the middle of next year, the new certificate will be issued to all remaining vehicles when they are re-licensed or declared to be off the road.
The existing blue V5C will remain valid for these vehicles until it is replaced and DVLA will not be asking for the old V5C to be returned.
Find out what’s new about the new registration certificate and get useful tips for when buying a used vehicle.
They might see themselves as being perfect – passing the Part 3 apparently means you become faster than a speeding train, are able to stop a bullet with your testicles (or the female equivalent), are capable of leaping tall buildings in a single bound, and so on. But they aren’t.
Wysall Lane
Someone should perhaps explain that to the one I saw yesterday on Wysall Lane, in Bunny.
He’d stopped on this narrow country lane just on the brow of a slight hill, and just ahead of a right bend. About 5 metres behind him was a farm field gateway, which he could have used, and which mkost sensible people do. The road is national speed limit (NSL) and people in cars (especially 4x4s – it’s rural, after all) come flying round that corner. The road is barely wide enough for two vehicles unless they move very close to the grass verge (and slow down, which most don’t).
Quite honestly, he’d chosen a very dangerous place to stop and begin lecturing his pupil. Doing it on test would be an immediate fail.
EXCERPT FROM HIGHWAY CODE
242 You MUST NOT leave your vehicle or trailer in a dangerous position or where it causes any unnecessary obstruction of the road.
[Laws RTA 1988, sect 22 & CUR reg 103]
243 DO NOT stop or park:
near a school entrance
anywhere you would prevent access for Emergency Services
at or near a bus or tram stop or taxi rank
on the approach to a level crossing/tramway crossing
opposite or within 10 metres (32 feet) of a junction, except in an authorised parking space
near the brow of a hill or hump bridge
opposite a traffic island or (if this would cause an obstruction) another parked vehicle
where you would force other traffic to enter a tram lane
where the kerb has been lowered to help wheelchair users and powered mobility vehicles
in front of an entrance to a property
on a bend
where you would obstruct cyclists’ use of cycle facilities
except when forced to do so by stationary traffic.
As the adverts often say – anyone can become a driving instructor. Unfortunately.
I saw someone posted this question on one of the forums:
If a pupil is on test and they are unable to exit a junction because the road is just too busy, and nobody lets them out, how long will the examiner allow them to stay there and will they intervene at some point…if so, how?
All the answers centre upon the premise that it really is impossible to get out, and that any attempt to go would be wrong.
They’re right, of course. If you can’t go, you can’t go. Simple as that. But the reality is that there is always a gap or someone prepared to give way in circumstances even remotely approaching the one described here.
On top of that, examiners are testing new drivers – not Lewis Hamilton – so they are likely to offer a little advice without it affecting the outcome of the test.
The instructor should make it clear to pupils going to test that they should not take risks if they are held up because, as I said above, if you can’t go, you can’t go. So don’t try.
EDIT 29/11/2010: As an update to this, I had a pupil fail her test a few weeks ago for pulling out of a junction when a car was coming. This is the junction in question.
This is on one of the Nottingham City Centre routes. The small slip road has two lanes at the give way line (red and yellow dots). You can just see from the picture that the slip road is at an angle and joins the main one-way road (A60) on a slight bend. This means that if you are in the lane marked by the red dot and steer too sharply in line with the kerb to the right, your vision of traffic coming from your left is impaired.
My pupil did exactly that, and pulled out when a car was coming. The examiner had to use the dual controls to stop her.
You’d think it was a clear-cut situtation. But my pupil has done nothing but go on about how she couldn’t have done anything else. I’m not making this up, but her argument is:
But if I couldn’t see, what choice did I have but to go? The examiner’s head was in the way. I didn’t want to get a fault for hesitating.
She will not accept that she was wrong, and is trying to find convoluted reasons to support her case.
My explanation to her is simple:
You can always see if you try hard enough. If you can’t see, you don’t go. It’s that simple. If the examiners head is in the way, ask him to move it. Just going when you can’t see is like playing Russian Roulette.
One lesson to be learned is that you don’t put yourself in that situation in the first place. Plan ahead.
And another one is that if it’s a choice between a minor hesitation fault and a serious collision situation, you take the safer option. You’ve got kids: are you going to put them at risk when you’re driving around with them screaming in the back?
I picked a pupil up for a lesson yesterday at 11am. She got in the car, rushed through the cockpit drill, then started to fiddle with her hair in the mirror. The ensuing – and totally politically incorrect – exchange went like this:
Me: Are you finished?
She: What?
Me: Messing with your hair.
She: I’ve just got up. I look like a tramp.
Me: No you don’t. You’re just doing that thing women do.
She: Men do it as well.
Me: No we don’t.
She: Yes they do. I’ve seen them.
Me: Well, not real men. Anyway, when no one’s looking we just pick our noses in the car.
She: OK, I’ll give you that one.
You watch next time you pull up behind a woman at traffic lights. You can virtually guarantee that you’ll see her lean across and start tousling her hair.
Another thing worth watching for: when you pull up behind someone who has their rear view mirror adjusted properly, you can see their eyes (or the top of their head if they are trying to avoid making eye contact because they just cut you up and they know that you are waiting to use International Drivers’ Sign Language or Exaggerated Lip Exercises at them).
Often, if the driver is female, you’ll notice that the mirror shows a slightly lower part of her anatomy. That’s because she’s got it adjusted so she can see herself in it.
They never give up, do they? I saw this post on a forum:
Since when has it been compulsory to give the pupils email address when filling in the booking form. I’ve never done until tonight. When did we recieve notification it was going to be compulsory.
Another money saving excercise no doubt.
A deliberate attempt to start another whinefest about the DSA. But if this “expert” had bothered to read the DSA information about this – circulated back in June – he wouldn’t have needed to try and show how clever he is and have it backfire on him:
Practical test online booking and appointment confirmations
From now, you’ll need to provide a contact email address when you book or change your practical test online to receive your booking confirmation.
Booking confirmations for tests will no longer be posted out to you.
If you’re an approved driving instructor (ADI) and are booking a test on behalf of your customer, you’ll need to consider which email address you’d like the confirmation to go to.
No need to bring appointment confirmation
You’re no longer required to bring your appointment confirmation to the test centre on the day of your practical test.
You must still bring the following items – if you don’t, the test may not go ahead and you may lose your fee:
an appropriately insured and licensed vehicle, displaying L-plates (except for taxi and Approved Driving Instructor (ADI) part two tests), that is suitable for the purpose of the test
the appropriate theory test pass certificate (or confirmation) if you are not exempt; for lorry or bus theory tests, you’ll need to bring both your multiple choice and hazard perception pass letters or your overall theory test pass certificate letter
both parts of your photo card licence – if you don’t take both parts of your licence, your test will not take place and you’ll lose your fee
if you have an old-style paper licence, you must take your signed driver licence and a valid passport – no other form of photographic identification will be accepted
for both modules of the motorcycle test you must present your compulsory basic training certificate (CBT)
for module two of the motorcycle test you must present your motorcycle module one test pass certificate
There’s no change to theory test bookings and theory test requirements.
Pretty clear, isn’t it? But I guess it must be wrong to save money (and trees) by not sending out letters for online bookings when there is a confirmation on screen, and now an email confirmation, sent anyway.
I saw this story in the Salisbury Journal – a gang of chimps employed by the Hampshire Council were painting white lines on a road but when they came to a dead badger, instead of removing it they just stopped painting and started again on the other side.
As you might expect from a bunch of unionized and copiously bureaucratized council neanderthals, the story is far more complex than you might imagine, and it is perfectly sensible and right that the badger should be left where it is and the lines not painted – no matter how much extra it will cost to send the primates out again to finish the job.
Mel Kendal, Hampshire County Council executive member for the environment, said: “We would usually liaise with our colleagues at the district council, who dispose of animal carcasses on the highways, to ensure the badger was removed before the white line-painting crew did this stretch of road.
“This appears not to have happened in this case and the white line-painting crew did what they thought was best until arrangements could be made to dispose of the carcass.
“These arrangements have now been made and the gap in the white lines will be filled in, at no extra cost to the council tax-payer.”
Mmmm. I wonder how this will not cost the tax-payer? Any money the council wastes – sorry, spends – is covered by the tax-payer one way or another, so quite how they think they can gloss over that is anyone’s guess. Maybe having to send the crew out again (and closing the roads to do it) will come out of Mel Kendal’s wages?
I particularly like the part about how the “crew did what they thought was best”. Obviously, thinking isn’t the crew’s biggest strength, and it is clear that Hampshire County Council also think that, too (though they can’t say it, of course).
For quite a few years I have been suffering from intermittent eczema (or something that fits right in with the description of eczema). One minute I’ll be all right, the next my skin feels like the surface of an orange and is itching like mad. If I scratch, it gets sore.
I usually get it on my forearms. It can also appear on my right upper arm (rarely my left), my stomach or groin, my hips, behind my knees, or on my shins. When it’s really bad I can feel it on my back. It doesn’t usually occur in all these places at once – it moves around!
When I first went to my doctor, he gave me some anti-allergy tablets but that was all (he didn’t diagnose eczema or anything else). After some time I stopped taking them because they didn’t seem to be working, and I just put up with the bouts of itching. But more recently I had been noticing that the smell of my clothes after washing seemed to correlate to the itching starting. In one particular case, I could associate the smell with a distinct feeling of being sunburnt.
Pure Soap Flakes
It occurred to me that it might be detergent-related – and after looking it up, irritation due to biological detergents did seem to be an issue.
To cut an already-long story short, I bought some soap flakes from an online store (they weren’t easy to find locally) and started using these instead of washing powder.
The intense itching cleared up almost overnight.
There was one hiccup, where I put on a shirt which had been washed with washing powder some weeks ago (all hell broke loose on my arms again), but after washing everything in the wardrobe… so far, so good.
There’s another bonus, too. They work out at around £2.00 a pack, after postage (or £1.50 if you can get them from a shop). Something like Ariel costs nearly £4.00. You use a hell of a lot less, so the pack lasts a lot longer. All you do is put a small amount in hot water and dissolve it with a whisk, then put it in the powder compartment of your washing machine.
White vinegar works as a softener (to avoid using the commercial softener, which I also suspected of making me itch). A drop or two of lemon oil or lavender oil (from an aromatherapy shop) adds a slight fragrance.
