{"id":14370,"date":"2013-11-28T23:05:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-28T23:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=14370"},"modified":"2013-11-28T23:05:00","modified_gmt":"2013-11-28T23:05:00","slug":"you-cant-have-it-both-ways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=14370","title":{"rendered":"You Can’t Have It Both Ways"},"content":{"rendered":"

I sometimes wish parents would get it into their thick, money-grabbing skulls that you can\u2019t just count on \u201cgetting lucky\u201d and pass your driving test if you can\u2019t drive, \"Payanymore than you can count of winning the lottery if you don\u2019t buy a ticket!<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think they realise what kind of rubbish parents it makes them by even hoping that little Jonny or Kylie might \u201cget lucky\u201d in the first place \u2013 especially because even if they did<\/strong> get lucky, they\u2019d then stand a bloody good chance of getting \u201cunlucky\u201d and killing themselves (or someone else) once they got out alone and started showing off.<\/p>\n

Two things got me thinking about this recently. The first was a call from an ex-pupil who\u2019d passed her test in an automatic well over a year ago but who had not driven since. She was taking auto lessons for almost two years before eventually passing her test on her seventh attempt. However, before that she\u2019d been with me doing manual lessons, also for two years, and she never got anywhere near test standard. Don\u2019t get me wrong \u2013 I\u2019d tried to get her to switch to auto much earlier on in her training, but she refused because she\u2019d bought a manual car. She was simply incapable of reliably mastering the foot coordination needed to stop without stalling. It was only when I found out she\u2019d sold her car some time later that both me and her son got on to her again and finally persuaded her to switch. But as I say, it still took her another two years and seven test attempts.<\/p>\n

Flatteringly, she always credited me with getting her through her test. She was a really nice lady and we\u2019ve always stayed in touch by telephone, and although I hadn\u2019t heard from her for a year, she called me when she recently bought her own \"Automaticcar and asked if I\u2019d take her out to get used to it.<\/p>\n

I have to admit that I was very nervous. To be fair, she was actually much better than I had expected, but there were still many traces of the old style. For example, as I got her to pull into her driveway at the end of that lesson she nearly ran into a fence as she hit the gas instead of the brake. She planned to drive to work that day, and I warned her to be careful. But when I called her the next day to see how it went it seems she had already scraped her gatepost. To make matters worse, she called me the next day to tell me she\u2019d done it again \u2013 this time causing somewhat more damage to the car.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a horrible position to be in. I have no control over her because she is a full licence holder, and yet if I did<\/strong> have any control I would have forbidden her to drive at all. Part of me wonders how she will ever be a safe driver \u2013 in spite of having taken over 200 hours of lessons and seven tests! I really feel sorry for her. But this leads me on to the second thing \u2013 the thing that I was referring to right at the start.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m usually quite fortunate when it comes to people wanting to take tests before they\u2019re ready. First of all, I try to nip it in the bud as soon as it starts \u2013 sometimes even nipping it before<\/strong> it starts (it\u2019s in my T&Cs). If they still won\u2019t listen, then the bottom line is that they\u2019re not going to test in my car, and whatever happens after that is up to them. A good illustration of this is a pupil I had not long ago (or his family, anyway). He was a nice lad, but very quiet. So quiet, in fact, that I am certain that there was some underlying issue, though \u201cthe family\u201d insisted not \u2013 even though they followed him around, even on some of his lessons. He\u2019d apparently had quite a few lessons with a previous instructor, but his dad reckoned he was being taken for a ride. When he came to me he had a test already booked, which I made them cancel after I\u2019d seen him drive. He couldn\u2019t possibly have passed.<\/p>\n

The trouble was, the dad kept saying \u201cI\u2019d like him to have a go\u201d (i.e. at the test). I made it clear that there was no way he was going in my car if he was not likely to pass. I always explain that I could lose my job if I send dangerous pupils to test \u2013 which is technically true, even if it\u2019s somewhat exaggerated (as an aside, it\u2019s nice when the examiner comments that it was a \u201cnice drive\u201d as they leave the car. It\u2019s less nice when it is obvious the candidate shouldn\u2019t have been there to start with. The examiner knows, and so do you).<\/p>\n

So anyway, they reluctantly agreed to \u201cmove\u201d the original test back by just over a month. I\u2019d have preferred an indefinite cancel until I could see light at the end of the tunnel, but they were obviously just trying to keep the number of lessons to a minimum. In that extra time, the lad took just three 1 hour lessons \"Mangled(with several cancellations). He couldn\u2019t do any of the manoeuvres correctly, nor were they getting better very quickly, and the pressure to get him to test standard with yet another idiotic test date looming was huge. To be honest, since he<\/strong> also just wanted to \u201chave a go\u201d, the pressure was much worse for me. I had also discovered since taking him on that in the case of reversing into a corner he strongly believed that when the kerb was coming towards<\/strong> him in the mirror then it was moving away<\/strong> in reality (honestly, he said exactly this), and it meant that every single time we did it he would repeatedly and determinedly steer the wrong way (or in random directions if he tried to think about it). With the test only weeks away, and a couple more hours of lessons at best, I couldn\u2019t see how I\u2019d be able to fix this and everything else in time.<\/p>\n

The last straw came on his final lesson with me. I asked him to follow the road ahead at a large, very busy, light-controlled junction. As the lights changed we drove into it \u2013 and then did an emergency stop right in the middle as he suddenly decided he didn\u2019t know where \u201cstraight ahead\u201d was (I stress again that his test was literally a fortnight away). On that same lesson, on three separate occasions I asked him to turn right \u2013 either at lights or at junctions with filter lanes \u2013 and on every occasion he made no attempt to move the car into the appropriate lane, and would have turned right across other traffic. And no matter how many times we travelled the same road with speed limit changes from 20\/30, 30\/40, or back again, he would simply not see the signs at least once per lesson and I\u2019d have to intervene. And finally, on that last session, we had a go at reversing into a corner and he just drove straight into the kerb (like he did on every previous lesson).<\/p>\n

At that point I terminated the lesson and went to speak to his father. I told him that the lad simply wasn\u2019t ready and that they should just cancel the test and not put him under such pressure. Yet again, the father repeated that he \u201cjust wanted him to have a go [at the test]\u201d \u2013 at least the fourth time he had said it to me. Yet again, I made it clear that I was not taking him to test because he had no chance of passing as things were. My argument about unfair pressure on the lad was totally lost on this guy. I never heard from them again, and my blood runs cold at what could happen to this obviously vulnerable young man if he goes to test or \u2013 worse \u2013 if he passes too soon and is as unpredictable on the road as the lady I mentioned above.<\/p>\n

What makes it particularly annoying is that my aim is to get pupils to test standard quickly and efficiently. I\u2019m fully aware that learning to drive is expensive, so I push them hard to get them up to a safe standard. If I ever thought I was milking people for money then I\u2019d give the job up instantly \u2013 my moral code is better than that. And yet with some people this just will not sink in. The guy in question only wanted his son \u2013 a young man who obviously had problems \u2013 to take a test that I knew he had no chance of passing on the off chance he\u2019d pass, with no regard for what might happen to him if he did. And God knows what stories they\u2019ll be telling their next instructor about me.<\/p>\n

One thing is certain, though. I\u2019ll sleep easier now. I wonder if the young lad\u2019s father will? Unfortunately, he is completely clueless about the matter, so I doubt that it will affect him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I sometimes wish parents would get it into their thick, money-grabbing skulls that you can\u2019t just count on \u201cgetting lucky\u201d and pass your driving test if you can\u2019t drive, anymore than you can count of winning the lottery if you don\u2019t buy a ticket! I don\u2019t think they realise what kind of rubbish parents it […]<\/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":[80,102,82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adi-related","category-general-related","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\/14370","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=14370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14370\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}