I was out with one of my learners very recently who has so
far taken 18hrs of instruction. She came
to me as an absolute beginner, and she does not have the opportunity to
practise in between my lessons. Now 18
hours is NOT long, at all, in the driving instruction world.
With no intention whatsoever of insulting any other driving
instructors out there who may be reading my blog, she is a typical example of
someone who an instructor could so easily be fooled by. By that I mean one could very easily consider
her ready for test, take her to test and yet she fails. I say that for the following reasons:
She very rarely makes a driving error in terms of driving to
a ‘system’ – so she does demonstrate a structure to her driving, MSpsl, POM,
LADA are all there. And boy do we like
to see that. That is a big tick in our
world.
She does not flap.
Whatever happens, she is able to deal with without seemingly panicking. This is quite unique for someone with so
little driving hours under her belt.
She is a ‘calm’ driver. Although I’m sure her mind is working very
hard, the actions of her hands and feet are controlled.
When you ask her a question as she is driving, almost
without fail, she will correctly answer the question.
So outwardly, you look at her, and you see ‘control’. In other words, when she is driving, you are
not anticipating the need to suddenly go for the duals at all. Instructors will be able to relate to that
remark I’m sure; some learners you cannot give them an inch, you must always be
100% at the ready, but not so for this lass.
But dig a bit deeper and there is much to take note of:
She will very occasionally have not enough regard for her
position in the road, driving too close to parked cars, or coming on to a
roundabout a little too soon when someone is already on it, so she pulls off
too near to the car that has just crossed her.
Very occasionally she will emerge from a junction without taking all the
necessary obs. Although she will recover
very quickly, she will repeatedly stall due to the gas not being set. She may use too much width of road on a turn
in the road, so that she touches a kerb, not mounts, but touches. She may drop some ‘mirrors in pairs’.
In other words she makes driving faults that we all see FLH’s
making constantly every day of the week.
If you and I were doing a turn in the road for instance, I bet we would
use the full width of the road so we ensure we do it in 3 and not 5. The stalls occur because she is right at that
transitional stage where we robotically set the handbrake and then set our feet
for every given pause, she is experimenting with holding it on the clutch
momentarily so she is driving more efficiently.
So it’s interesting.
She is good. She is really
good. I would not be in the slightest
bit surprised if she produces a clean sheet on the test (no driving faults at
all), because I can see that she has got so much potential for being an
extremely good driver – but test ready?
Oh no. Not yet. You see, I absolutely refuse to treat my
learners like guinea pigs.... this is not “BIG TOM Driving School – if you like
a gamble, we will take a chance”. I
would say she is about 70% there. So it
would be so easy to get her to book her test, she then continues taking a few
more lessons before her test. She would
then end up going to test about 80% ready, technically more than able to pass
the test, but she could very easily fail.
The test day nerves will almost certainly reduce that driving ability
down to about 60% and that would mean her test pass/fail is more down to luck
than ability.
My learners tell me about their friends who take the test 4
times before they pass, due to ‘unlucky’ incidents that you could not possibly have
predicted cropping up on the test. As I
posted up on my Twitter (“tukkr”) yesterday, these events DO crop up, and
having someone on a bike waiting at an emerge on the wrong side of the road, is
a great example of the kind of thing that happens. You may go through your entire course of
driving lessons and not experience that (quite freakish) event. You go to test, and see the cyclist effectively
blocking you from turning right, and so you think, "well, the best course of
action is to let her emerge so she is out of my way". You then give her a hand signal to tell her
to go, and she sees you, and rides straight across an oncoming car that has to
stop suddenly. THIS is the reason why
people fail tests. They are not properly
equipped to be able to accurately assess and decide on what the proper course
of action is. Driving has an incredible
amount of potential for unusual events occurring – it is extremely fluid*. You could not possibly expose a learner to
each and every possibly event that MAY crop up on a test, but what you can do
is provide them with the skill and ability to anticipate, assess and properly
act on situations as they develop.
*It is my opinion that this is ONE of the reasons why the
driving instructors part 3 test has such a low pass rate (about 30%). An SE who is role-playing a learner, has an
enormous amount of possibilities to create many problems, and if the SE is not
careful, he/she can fall into the trap of creating far more than would ever be
experienced in an hour of driving with a real learner. This ‘flooding’ of faults does not represent
reality, and does not properly test a PDI’s ability to apply the core-comps.
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