Think beyond the passing of tests

The reality of the situation re the quality of driver training currently is that the liability or risk of newly qualified drivers is so great that car insurers are only prepared to make it viable in financial terms to insure a car if the driver agrees to having a black "telematics" box fitted.  That is where we currently find ourselves. 

Quite typically my pupils are telling me that with telematics the quotes they receive for a fairly average second hand car is around £1500, without telematics £2500.   The telematics are in effect behaving as some kind of substitute driving instructor whereby the newly qualified driver continues to sense a monitoring of driving behaviour.  Why is this necessary?  Because bluntly, without it, insurers recognise the increased risk that the new driver presents.

What this should be telling us all as an industry, is that the driving training being provided can best be described as a systemic failure on a cataclysmic magnitude .  Preparing pupils to pass driving tests that then exposes that they are ill-equipped to drive independently post-test is really no reason to celebrate.  If this performance measure were being monitored in the same manner as any other comparable industry regarding the value it provides to the consumer, there would be a national outcry of it being 'not fit for purpose'. 

However, in the interests of balance, it should be said that it is very often our customers desire to look upon driving training as no more than being able to pass the driving test - so the fact that these customers are now having to endure extortionate insurance premiums is for many driving instructors, quite justifiable.  I have just renewed my own driving school car annual insurance for just over £250 the same level it was when I came into the industry in 2008.

If a customer wants to go to test come hell or high water, they will find an instructor that will let them go to test.  This is one of the downfalls of our system; a candidate presenting themselves for a driving test does not require ANY formal authority to go to test from a professional driving instructor, they don't even need to use a driving school car for the purposes of the test.  Our pupils and their parents do not, on the whole, make connections between the quality of driving training and long-term road safety, instead, their minds are centred around the repeated taking of driving tests in order to eventually get a full driving licence. 

And this is equally the case for PDI's who want to qualify as a driving instructor too.  PDI's if left to their own devices will naturally, generally speaking be focussed just on the passing of the 3 DVSA tests; who can blame them?  And yet, look at the fall out rate of driving instructors from the industry.  The DfT statistics that are regularly provided for public viewing show all of us the static numbers on the ADI register DESPITE the monthly addition of newly qualified ADI's.  ADI's are leaving the industry in droves. 

How this level of mass "under-performance" is allowed to continue unchecked is quite unbelievable.

Tom Ingram provides driving training to PDI's on a PAYG basis 0775 607 1464
http://drivinginstructortraining.bigtom.org.uk/