Diary Of An ADI

This is an old article from 2010, but it’s had a run of hits recently, and I have updated it to make sure it is current.

Someone has found the blog several times on the search term “abandoned tests”. I’m not exactly sure what they were looking for, but here’s a bit of information that is probably relevant.

I’ve had several abandoned tests in my career as an ADI. No matter how you look at it, they are embarrassing for you and traumatic for your pupil. One of them was around 2006 – the candidate tried to drive into a No Entry street leading off a roundabout after being told to “follow the road”.

When I discussed it with him afterwards he said that all that was going through his mind was “go straight ahead unless told otherwise” and that he’d seen the signs, but that instruction just ended up taking precedence in his head. He had been one of those learners who takes things in very slowly, even though he was a very intelligent lad (very good at Maths, and went on to study it at University). Once he’d made the error, he just lost it and the examiner pulled him over and abandoned the test. I had to walk about ¾ mile to find him where the examiner had stopped the car. He passed his test soon afterwards.

Another one was in 2008. That pupil was extremely slow, and although he was up to test standard, I don’t think his mind was ever going to be able to stay there. He got the Bay Park exercise right at the start of his test, and finished just on the line (which isn’t an automatic fail). He leaned out the door and said to the examiner “have I failed?”, and the examiner replied “I’ll tell you at the end”. Unfortunately, his mind was so one-tracked he was still thinking about the Bay Park when he attempted to drive into the gate at the end of the Test Centre driveway. The examiner abandoned it there and then, less than 5 minutes in, and about 5 metres outside the test centre. I vividly remember the examiner asking “is he on anything?”

In another example from 2013, a very nervous pupil made a simple mistake – and one which might not have been a test fail in the first place – but then cracked up and couldn’t continue. She was hysterical from what the examiner told me. She passed easily the 2nd time (which I had expected her to do the 1st).

And my most recent one was 2017, with another nervous pupil who had found learning difficult. The test hit her so badly that she pretty much forgot how to drive (I was sitting in on that one). She took further lessons with me and passed second attempt.

Although you always blame yourself, you can’t control what a candidate does when they are out there with the examiner. It all depends on what kind of people they are. All you can do is teach them as well as you possibly can.

In a nutshell, when an examiner abandons a test, he/she will typically leave the pupil with the car and inform you of the location when they get back to the centre (that was correct when I originally wrote this). Nowadays (2023 edit), they will always try to get back to the test centre unless the driving is so dangerous that would be a problem.

Sometimes (from what I’ve been told), the examiner might walk back with the pupil and have a chat. If you’re sitting in, you can take the examiner back to the test centre. The examiner cannot supervise a learner due to insurance cover, which is why he cannot bring them back once the test is terminated and the candidate becomes a learner again. Having said that, the examiners up here will make every effort to take the test to its conclusion back at the centre, and they will even dissuade candidates from terminating tests as long as there is no danger to them or the public.

Look at the date this was first published! It’s an old, old post! CCL definitely IS part of the Part 3 test in 2019.

A few years ago, on a now-defunct forum, one of the resident fossils took issue with comments I had made on the page where I provide the PST marking sheets for download. It was around the time DVSA (or DSA, as it then was) introduced CCL (client-centred learning) as part of the expected skills of an ADI. I had pointed out that since the Standards Check was going to be looking for evidence of CCL, and since learners were being taught using it, at some point the same approach would have to be used for ADI qualification on the Part2 and 3 tests.

My only point at the time was to indicate that once I had access to the necessary marking sheets for the new test, then I would make them available.

DVSA announced in 2016 that the Part 3 test would indeed be changing – an outcome so obvious that I can take no credit whatsoever for predicting it several years earlier. However, DVSA is not renowned for its efficiency or constancy, and although I cannot now recall the precise sequence of events (i.e. delays) to the change since its announcement, this latest email indicates that they still haven’t got the necessary Parliamentary approval, and the proposed start date of “late October” has been put back yet again.

No dates are given, but since any ADI with a test booked needs to be aware of what is happening, it would be logical to assume that the best-estimate start date for the new test has got to be at least as far away as the current longest waiting time between booking and taking a test. In other words, several months – and that’s several months from the date Parliamentary approval is gained, which may not be for several months in itself!

In short, don’t expect the new Part 3 testing regime to come into effect until 2018 (that’s my estimate). At least 2018 (that’s my cynicism).

Fair enough, I could be wrong, and they might get approval tomorrow [edit: they didn’t]. It came into effect in 2018], but I doubt it. Taking the Part 3 is stressful enough for people as it is. Knowing that the test was changing will have meant they will have been trained specifically for it, so to be told that it’s old-style PSTs is really going to screw them up.

On the one hand, it’s all the government’s fault for being so inefficient. But on the other hand, DVSA should not have announced a semi-specific start date before Parliamentary approval had been gained. It was obvious that it simply wasn’t going to happen to a fixed timescale.

It also makes me wonder when learners will finally be allowed on motorways. [edit: they are now – since June 2018 – anyway]. That also needs Parliamentary approval, and back in August it was expected “in 2018” (the ‘first half’ being implied). At this rate we’ll be lucky if it happens during the current government, which takes us right back to where we were before.

And these are the same twats trying to take us out of Europe. Make up a suitable sentence using the words “piss”, “up”, and “brewery”.

I originally wrote this way back in 2010, and it was only a simple couple of paragraphs thrown out following a search term used to find the blog. Since then, I get periodic hits on the same search term: driving examiners are arseholes. I had another today.

Assuming that it’s a candidate who is searching, the lack of a question format suggests they are seeking like-minded people to rant with, rather than to actually ask if examiners are arseholes. The person using the term probably thinks they’ve been hard done by on their test after having failed, and is seeking to blame the examiner – quite possibly, in my own experience, in spite of ample evidence from their drive that the examiner was right.

On the other hand, it isn’t beyond the realms of possibility that it is an instructor who has taken exception to one of his pupils failing their test. I’ve seen more than one take to a forum to vent their anger at a test fail they disagreed with (at least two in the last month [in 2010]).

Examiners are not arseholes.

The purpose of the driving test is to ensure that a candidate meets the bare minimum requirement to be allowed out on the roads unsupervised. The pass ‘mark’ is actually quite low, which means that anything below it is going to result in a fail. That’s the way it is, and nothing the candidate or instructor can do is going to change it.

If you don’t check your mirrors a few times when you should have, you will accrue faults, but miss them one time too many and you will fail. You will fail if you miss the check even once if there is someone behind or alongside you. The same is true of blind spot checks, and observations at junctions. You will get away with poor checks up to a point, but if it’s obvious you have a problem in this area you will get a serious fault (and if there’s someone behind or coming towards you, you will fail immediately).

You’re expected to stop at amber or red traffic lights. If you could have done safely, but don’t, you will fail. Furthermore, you’re expected to understand how traffic lights work – green filter arrows, etc. – and if you sit there holding up traffic when you should be moving off, then you’ll fail for that, too. If you completely miss traffic lights, or drive in such a way that it looks like you have, you will fail.

If you don’t stay in lane – demonstrate good “lane discipline” – you will accrue faults. If you weave across lanes when someone is behind you, you will fail. If you don’t realise you are doing it – and let’s face facts here, if you knew, you wouldn’t be – you will fail. If you change lanes without checking your mirrors first, and signalling if necessary, you will fail.

If you pull out in front of someone, you will fail. If you did it because you thought you “could make it”, you have no excuse whatsoever. If you stall you will accrue faults, and one stall too many will result in a fail. If you cause a hold up by stalling even once, you will almost certainly fail for that alone.

If the speed limit is 30mph, it doesn’t mean you can drive at 40 and expect to get away with it. Anything illegal is a fail. And if the speed limit is 60mph and the road is clear, doing 30 is causing a hold up and you’ll fail for driving like that. You need to see the road signs, and be confident enough to drive according to what they tell you.

If you drive too fast for given situations, you are going to accrue faults. If you approach a junction or a bend too fast, or slow down too late, if the examiner uses the brake because you haven’t, you will fail. Even if you think you were going to brake, if you were too late you will fail. Harsh braking will accrue faults, and one time too many will get you a fail. Do it in front of someone and you’ll fail immediately.

If you don’t stop at a STOP junction – and I mean stop absolutely dead – you will fail. It is illegal not to stop at these, and slowing to a crawl, no matter how slow it is, is NOT stopping.

If you mangle the gears every time you change them, you will accrue faults. If you use the wrong gear you will accrue faults. Do it one time to many and you will fail. Do it once at the wrong time – going into 1st when you wanted 3rd in moving traffic, for example – and you will fail.

This list is by no means complete. But the bottom line is that if you do any of those things and fail your test, it is because of your poor driving skills – not because the examiner is an arsehole.

It often amuses me the kinds of questions that get asked in Q&A columns in the media. Apart from the stupid ones along the lines of “does anyone else have a surname that rhymes with ‘spanner’, like mine does?” there are the ones that a child could answer simply by typing one sentence into Google – and yet the asker has wasted money on a stamp (there’s no way they’d have used email) and got themselves into print.

Readers who have been following the blog for a while will know that I am sometimes scathing with my comments about other instructors – the dickheads who try to do a manoeuvre 3 metres behind me on a 500 metre stretch of empty road, or who turn up in a small car park I’m using and take over with their own manoeuvre (until I explain a few things to them) get frequent mentions. I’ve not gone off on one for a while, but flicking through this month’s Intelligent Instructor magazine I had to shake my head when I read the Readers’ Questions section.

If you’re an ADI, there is absolutely no excuse for not knowing that the driving test is changing in December. Likewise, there’s no excuse for not being subscribed to DVSA announcements, nor of being aware of new posts to Despatch (DVSA’s blog).

So I was surprised to see someone asking what the changes to the Show Me/Tell Me questions are going to be.

For God’s sake! DVSA sent an email alert back in July explaining the changes in detail. They did a Despatch blog article covering the test changes, including the questions back in August, covering the wording the examiners will use. The Show Me/Tell Me questions are given in black and white in both of those. If you Google “show me tell me december 2017” four of the top seven hits are DVSA pages either as mentioned above, or informational videos on YouTube (I’m the seventh). Then there are dozens and dozens of other instructor sites which talk about it, and link to the DVSA articles. And DVSA even sent out a booklet to all instructors last month with all this in it.

I was similarly surprised to see someone else ask how the examiner will word the instruction to pull up on the right (one of the new “manoeuvres”).

DVSA covered that in August with their Despatch blog post. They also produced a YouTube video explaining it. And it was in the booklet, I think.

It’s funny, but sometimes when you’re on a lesson and your pupil comes to, say, a roundabout (which they’ve been struggling with). They’ll go through all the motions and negotiate it perfectly. You think you’ve cracked it, and you’ll say something encouraging like “that was great. Well done. I liked how you checked there was enough room to go with that car coming towards you.” And they say “what car?”

I can’t help get the same feeling when ADIs ask dumb questions like this. I mean, what the hell are they doing on their lessons if they don’t know this basic stuff?