{"id":12382,"date":"2013-05-04T01:53:23","date_gmt":"2013-05-04T00:53:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=12382"},"modified":"2013-05-04T01:53:23","modified_gmt":"2013-05-04T00:53:23","slug":"26-attempts-to-pass-your-driving-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=12382","title":{"rendered":"26 Attempts To Pass Your Driving Test?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story from the East Anglian Daily Times reports that a woman<\/a> in Bury St Edmunds passed her test at the 26th attempt.<\/p>\n

As an aside, my longest-serving pupil passed on his third attempt, but not before he\u2019d notched up over 160 hours of lessons. I calculated that he\u2019d spent nearly \u00a34,000 on those alone (he wasn\u2019t a natural driver and I\u2019d tried to persuade him to consider learning in an automatic many times, but he wouldn\u2019t have it). I think that the most test attempts I\u2019ve ever had was by a Polish pupil who passed on his 6th try (and he was a very good driver).<\/p>\n

In the article, a BSM instructor is quoted as saying of the woman involved:<\/p>\n

Failing 25 times before you pass is not the norm and you may need to consider whether driving is for you\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I agree with that, though there\u00a0isn’t\u00a0much an instructor can say (or do). Not directly, anyway. With most people, if you even hinted at them being bad drivers you\u00a0wouldn’t\u00a0see them again for dust. The BSM instructor continues:<\/p>\n

Is that person safe on the roads? Hand on heart, I don\u2019t know. But that person has passed the test at the end of the day. The examiner would have known this woman\u2019s previous record<\/strong> and they don\u2019t turn a blind eye to anything. The test is very rigorous.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That part in bold I don\u2019t agree with. I can think of many occasions where one of my pupils has passed and it is clear that the examiner has no knowledge at all of their history. In particular, two of my clean-sheets were achieved by pupils who had previously failed, and both times the examiner clearly wasn\u2019t aware of their previous fails. I think that all you can say is that they might<\/strong> be able to find out if they tried (and I\u2019m not 100% convinced on that score, either), but the information isn\u2019t a requirement of the tests they conduct. The examiners have no need to know a person\u2019s test history because it might influence their decision, and it shouldn\u2019t. Furthermore, to the best of my knowledge, my pupil who took 160 hours is driving around quite happily – yet at the back of my mind I\u2019d written him off, thinking he\u2019d never make a driver. It shows how wrong you can be.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Another instructor is quoted as saying:<\/p>\n

\u2026I\u2019ve had good, confident learners who have completely fallen apart unexpectedly in exams. I would say that accounts for 65-70% of failures.<\/p>\n

There is a big element of luck. You could be very lucky and have a nice run through clear roads that aren\u2019t busy with no hassle at all.<\/p>\n

But you could be unlucky and get a particularly harsh examiner who could easily fail you. You might forget to check your mirrors before turning and they would fail you for that.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I wish some ADIs would think before they speak to the media, and stop keep trying to vent their spleens over prejudices and misconceptions they might have concerning the DSA. In my direct experience, not checking mirrors or looking into blind spots once or twice isn\u2019t an automatic fail – but in some situations it could quite easily be one if there is someone there and the candidate doesn\u2019t see them. But if it points to an underlying issue – if they do it repeatedly – then they deserve to fail, whether it is down to \u201cnerves\u201d or not. And if their poor observations could, in other circumstances, be dangerous (i.e. not looking properly at a junction), don\u2019t be surprised if the examiner quite rightly fails them!<\/p>\n

If a candidate can drive then they should be able to handle a busy route as well as the same route when it is \u201ca nice run through clear roads\u201d. If they cannot, then there is no issue to address except on their instructor\u2019s part for not training them properly. \u201cLuck\u201d certainly plays a part in whether a road is clear or not, but not in how well a candidate handles it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This story from the East Anglian Daily Times reports that a woman in Bury St Edmunds passed her test at the 26th attempt. As an aside, my longest-serving pupil passed on his third attempt, but not before he\u2019d notched up over 160 hours of lessons. I calculated that he\u2019d spent nearly \u00a34,000 on those alone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[80,87,82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adi-related","category-news","category-training"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12382\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}