{"id":13623,"date":"2013-08-21T00:59:05","date_gmt":"2013-08-20T23:59:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=13623"},"modified":"2013-08-21T00:59:05","modified_gmt":"2013-08-20T23:59:05","slug":"more-bad-pass-rates-but-you-have-to-read-this-to-believe-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=13623","title":{"rendered":"More Bad Pass Rates – But You Have To Read This To Believe It!"},"content":{"rendered":"

You often hear ADIs going on about only teaching people the bare minimum of skills required to pass the driving test instead of teaching them how to drive properly. The DSA\u2019s strapline is \u201cSafe Driving for Life\u201d. So it beggars belief when you see a story like this<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"GreaterOn the surface, it\u2019s just another FOI request blown out of proportion by some local hacks. But the really frightening part is the case studies they\u2019ve dug up.<\/p>\n

The article reports that Failsworth test centre has the lowest pass rate in Manchester, at 39.2% (bolstered by a really funny (not) reference to the name). It points out that Hyde test centre is 16% higher than this, at about 55%. As I mentioned recently<\/a>, no one is ever prepared to refer to the population demographics in the areas they are comparing. Failsworth (marked as \u201cA\u201d on the map), being much closer to the centre of Manchester (and virtually part of Oldham), has a much higher proportion of non-UK national citizens. Hyde (marked as \u201cB\u201d) is out in the sticks, even though it is still part of Greater Manchester. Indeed, it is only about 6 miles from Glossop \u2013 which is so rural not everyone has electricity there yet!  The article also says that Buxton \u2013 25 miles out into the countryside \u2013 has a pass rate of 61.4%. Obviously, higher pass rates are the story editors\u2019 only focus \u2013 but it does illustrate my point.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the best part. They give several examples. Firstly, someone called Kate Emmott failed at Failsworth, and is now planning on taking her test at an \u201ceasier\u201d test centre. She says that she got a \u201cmajor\u201d fault (marked as \u201cserious\u201d on the test sheet) for not driving in a bus lane. She says:<\/p>\n

\n

It was coming up to 10am and I was worried about it. I think I had a really strict tester to be honest.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If Manchester\u2019s bus lanes are anything like the ones around here, their morning hours of operation are 7.30-9.30. Being \u201cnearly\u201d 10am is not the same as 9.30am, and failing to realise this is not the result of a \u201cstrict\u201d examiner. It\u2019s the result of being a bad driver.<\/p>\n

Then there is the case of Emily Bleackley, who failed her test four times in Failsworth, and then passed \u201cweeks later\u201d in Hyde. The report says:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2026her second fail last December was for \u2018getting lost\u2019, while her third attempt was scuppered when she slowed down to let a car pass. Her fourth attempt was down to bad \u2018filtering\u2019 with other traffic, she says.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So here\u2019s someone else who cannot equate bad driving with failing your test. You don\u2019t fail for \u201cgetting lost\u201d \u2013 unless you get lost and then make bad mistakes. Slowing down to let people pass \u2013 probably on a busy road, since we\u2019re talking almost the centre of Manchester \u2013 is dangerous and the sign of a frightened rabbit! And \u201cbad filtering\u201d almost certainly means not being aware of what others are doing, and changing lanes without proper safety checks. In spite of this, Ms Bleackley says:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2026[my] instructor could not understand [my] fails either\u2026 She said she couldn\u2019t believe I\u2019d failed because my driving was completely up to standard. I was in tears after my tests at Failsworth.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019m sorry, Emily, but you listed at least three good reasons why your fails were totally justified, and it is shocking that your instructor thought you were \u201cup to standard\u201d if you were so obviously unable to cope with other traffic. You weren\u2019t<\/strong> up to standard \u2013 that\u2019s why you failed, and for reasons which are absolutely clear. And it is worrying that you subsequently passed at a test centre where you\u2019re shortcomings perhaps weren\u2019t challenged. Are you going to drive exactly the way you did on those failed tests now you\u2019ve got your licence? Like not driving in bus lanes, slowing to a crawl when you get scared, and weaving from lane to lane without checking first?<\/p>\n

The DSA is quoted as saying:<\/p>\n

\n

Pass rates can be influenced by various factors. Some people may take more lessons and be better prepared for the test. Statistical factors can also play a part as the number of tests conducted at different test centres varies significantly. <\/p>\n

However, every driving test is conducted to the same strict requirements. We train examiners to a high standard and closely monitor their work to ensure that all tests are assessed consistently across the country.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But nothing can hide the fact that some test centres \u2013 and their routes \u2013 are inevitably going to be easier, and this is always going to result in some people passing their tests when they have underlying issues with their driving. Although it isn\u2019t the DSA\u2019s fault, the two examples above provide clear evidence that two very substandard new drivers have been put on the roads by the system \u2013 and it is therefore the system which is at fault. Unfortunately, the system is too complex to be able to reliably identify every single variable involved, and it is left to people like Ms Bleackley and her driving instructor to open their mouths and provide the necessary pointers to where some of the faults with it might lie. <\/p>\n

Another news story adds weight to this, and I\u2019ll put an article about that together shortly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You often hear ADIs going on about only teaching people the bare minimum of skills required to pass the driving test instead of teaching them how to drive properly. The DSA\u2019s strapline is \u201cSafe Driving for Life\u201d. So it beggars belief when you see a story like this. On the surface, it\u2019s just another FOI […]<\/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":[80,86,81,85,87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adi-related","category-bad-drivers","category-driving-test-related","category-dsa-related","category-news"],"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\/13623","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=13623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13623\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}