The Car you Learn to Drive in

 

It's the Driving Instructor that counts, not the car.

It seems when shopping around for one of the driving instructors Nottingham area that some new pupils are looking to learn in a particular make and model of car. Usually it's something like an Audi or a Mini or perhaps the same make as the family car. If you are looking to take driving lessons in Nottingham then there are more important things to think about than which car you will be using. It's far better to have an instructor who is experienced and has a good track reord of test passes. Punctuality is important as late starting lessons can leave pupils nervous and of course a friendly and couteous manner will make your lessons a more pleasant expericence. The car you drive is of much less importance than getting the right instructor for you.

Ask yourself how much you actually know about cars. Most people get their info from family and friends who are not really experts in the field. Ask yourself what type of car you you will want or be able to afford after the test and keep your expectations reasonable.

Learning in an expensive model of car is a poor choice if the instructor is not up to scratch. Remember you are buying tuition, not the status of driving a certain make of car. Many new cars have features like an electronic parking brake which most learners will not have in their first car. Much better to learn to drive in a basic model car and then if you want to upgrade later when you have the money then that's fine

If you do learn in a prestige car you may be more nervous about mishandling or even damaging it. Too big a car can make you nervous on the road especially in tight situations. Too many control options can be confusing so keep it simple.

Chances are if you are a new driver you will not be in a position to buy an expensive car on passing your test. Your first car may seem like a bit of a shed by comparison.

Lesson prices may be more expensive to cover the cost of the tuition vehicle.

It's the quality of the driving lessons, not the school car.

Your overall aim is to obtain your driving licence and be a competent driver at the end of your course so make sure you put this at the top of your priority list. Check out driving instructors reviews or ask around friends who have passed their test when selecting an instructor.

Obviously you will need to be comfortable when learning so the driving school car will need to be a decent size. It should be reasonably clean inside and out and be in good mechanical condition. Other than that there is nothing to worry about. All driving instructors should have a car suitable for just about anyone to drive. I use a Skoda Fabia and have done for many years now. It accomodates all sizes of pupil and is a really smooth drive. Anyway, have fun on your lessons and happy motoring!

Are you Sitting Comfortably?

Take control during driving lessons in Nottingham

One of the first things a new pupil is taught by driving instructors Nottingham is how to set the driving position for optimum comfort and safety. This is something perhaps forgotten after the test as you can see so many experienced drivers who do not pay attention to their seating position. They will often strain themselves to reach the pedals or sit too close to the wheel. Let's have a look at a few things to consider before you turn on the engine and move off.

First thing to look at is the clothes you are wearing. So many pupils get into the car and keep their coat on. Yes, it may be cold outside but the car is heated and soon you will be too warm. Many times we have pulled over to allow the learner to take off coats and jumpers. If you were on a motorway you may have to sit there boiling before you got the chance, so make yourself comfortable before you start. I think some nervous drivers feel more protected if they keep a large coat on. It may protect you in a crash, but not much.

Footwear is the other big thing. In a learner it can make a huge difference when it comes to clutch control. You don't want the soles too thick or you can't feel the pedal movement. Too thin and you may have trouble pushing the pedals down. Make sure they are not too loose or tight and that they aren't flip flops. These have got to be the worst shoes for driving. I had to take a pupil home the other day as she had mistakenly put her crocs on and had no control over the steering because she was concentrating on working the gas pedal in her crocs. Because she was uncomfortable she couldn't concentrate at all!

Next comes the seating position. Car seats have a pretty wide range of movement nowadays to accommodate the tallest to the shortest people. It's important that you adjust things correctly as poor posture can cause aches and pains particularly in the lower back and can effect your level of awareness on long journeys,. You need to be a distance from the pedals which allows you to fully press down the clutch pedal without reaching too far or locking your knee. If you have to reach then chances are you won't press the clutch all the way down and will grind the gears. If your knees are locked and you have even a moderate collision you stand a bigger chance of breaking your leg. If your leg is bent it will just fold in a crash. If you are driving an automatic check you can press the brake or accelerator without reaching. Sitting too far forward can hinder movement and trap your legs under the wheel.

Shorter people will benefit from raising the height of the seat. This will give you a better view of the road ahead and also the dials on the dashboard. As the seat tilts forward as it is raised it allows for better reach of the pedals. The seatbelt anchorage point can also be lowered so the seatbelt fits correctly over the shoulder and across the chest. With the seat too low the seat belt can cut into your neck.

Nottingham driving instructors do it while sitting comfortably!

Alter the rake of the seat, that means the degree of backward tilt, so it supports your weight and doesn't have you leaning too far back or hunched over the wheel. New learners tend to have the seat  tilted too far back and then pull themselves forward using the wheel. This causes wobbly steering and is sometimes a sign of nerves. Remember the head restraint is just that and not a head rest. One pupil I had recently could not help but force his head back against the head restraint by pushing against the wheel with his arms. Not a good posture at all. You can't move your head properly to look to the side.

A guy I gave instructor training to was involved in a car accident. He was hit from behind by a car moving at speed. He had checked his mirror and saw that he was going to be hit. The mistake he made was to brace himself by locking his arms and gripping the wheel tightly. He suffered serious damage to his wrists on impact. This is one good reason not to lock your arms when driving. When the arms are extended then the inside of your wrists should touch the wheel. They will then have a bend in them when the wheel is gripped properly allowing for more accurate steering. In the event of a crash the arms will bend and the seatbelt will prevent you from being propelled forward.

Once the seat has been set you may need to adjust the steering wheel to finish things off. If you've got long legs like me then you may have the seat quite far back and low down. To prevent reaching for the wheel, flip the lever and pull the wheel out towards you. It can also be raised or lowered. Don't have the steering wheel too close to your chest. There can be the risk of injury if the air bag goes off. You need a distance of at least 12 inches between you and the steering wheel for the air bag to do it's job. When you have the position you want just flip the lever back and make sure it locks back into place.

There you have it. Take a bit of time before your next drive to make sure you are as comfortable as possible. Happy motoring to you.

 

ADI Standards Check Triggers

 

It's enough to make any driving instructor nervous. If you trigger three of the four DVSA stats then you will be called in for a standards check. Some instructors don't mind doing a standards check but I must admit I'm not a fan. Here are the four triggers -

Average number of driving faults per test 6 or greater

Average number of serious faults per test 0.55 or greater

Percentage of driving tests where the examiner had

to take physical action 10% or higher

Driving test pass rate 55% or lower

If 3 of the triggers are met within a 12 month period then an ADI will be requested to attend a standards check. This only applies to an ADI who has presented for 5 or more tests.

I always train my pupils to a standard beyond what is required for the test. This way we can take into account the detrimental effect of nerves on the day. I make sure that the pupils can drive without my intervention over all types of roads and traffic situations. The easy routes come first to make sure all the basics are in place. Next come the intermediate routes to develop the basic skills and get used to interacting with more moving traffic. Then come the manoeuvres to develop and fine tune the car control skills and finally the busy city centre routes. Sat nav and sign following develop hazard awareness skills to ensure the pupil is good to drive unattended after the test.

Even after all this people still fail for one reason or another. Is the pass rate a good and fair indicator of an instructor's teaching ability? I don't really think so. The stress of the first attempt is usually the reason for failure. Not thinking straight or mishandling of the vehicle are common on the first attempt but an instructor can only do so much to soothe the nerves of a pupil, once the test begins they have to do it for themselves.

An instructor's pass rate can depend on which test centre they are local to. The trigger pass rate is 55%. The test centre with the lowest pass rate is Speke in Liverpool with a miserable 29%. The highest is Kendal with a pass rate of 68.3%. If an instructor worked out of the Liverpool test centre they would be hitting the pass rate trigger every year whereas an instructor in Kendal would have a much better chance of staying above the trigger. This would not be a true reflection of the driving instructor's abilities. It's simply the luck of the draw on which test centre you are using.

Six driving faults or less per test is a strange trigger. Given a test candidate can commit 15 driver faults before failing without a serious fault being committed the figure of six seems arbitrary. I always have regarded six or less faults as indicative of a good clean drive and personally I think that 15 faults allowed is too many. I would go with 10 as it brings the committed faults to less than one every three minutes. Six seems a bit too low given people are prone to nerves on a driving test.

It is a serious matter when an examiner takes physical action on a test as they will only do so if there is a definite danger that a safety critical incident will occur. This really shouldn't happen at all to pupils who are genuinely at test standard so I suppose this trigger is fair. I don't want to get to a place where I worry and become annoyed at pupils if they fail their test as you never can tell. I just had a great pupil who took 4 tests to pass. He just couldn't remain calm and come up with the goods on the day. If all pupils tested like him then I'd be having a standards check every year but there's nothing I could really do about his poor performance on tests. Ah well, I'll just keep doing my best and teaching safe driving for life.

Brought to you by Russ Chaplin, one of the driving schools Nottingham area.

Driving Instructor Hacked

Having your website hacked is a little bit depressing.

It's been one of those turbulent times recently where lots of problems associated with driving instruction all seem to come at once. A high turnover of new pupils owing to loads of tests going out in the same week. Car damage due to pupils reversing the car into a trolley corral in the supermarket and most shockingly the driving school website going down owing to it being hacked.

   It's my first experience of being hacked though I have had my driving school website spammed many times. My website seemed to be accruing fake URLs which went from my website to a page about Viagra or Casinos or some other such thing. They never really effected anything so I had a word with a web developer guy and just redirected them to my site's home page. This time though the site went down totally.

  I must give a shout out to the nice people at GoDaddy who managed to get my site back up and running after nearly a week. It took a good few hours back and forth on the phone but now we are back in business. I've dropped to the 2nd page on Google search but hopefully I will be back on the front page soon. Phone calls did definitely drop off during the down time. Was it because it coincided with the students just getting back to university or does a website help to sell lessons? I have been a bit sceptical about the effectiveness of websites recently with most enquiries coming from Google my Business. It surely can't help consumer confidence when they click the website button and are presented with a blank screen though. Probably better to have a site than not.

   So why would anyone want to hack a lowly driving instructor's website? one thing hackers do is make a copy of your website and then destroy yours a bit at a time. When it has completely gone you receive an email from them offering to sell you the site files for a price. If it came down to it I would just redesign the site on the same domain and link it all up again. No way would I give in and pay some hacker for my own stuff. Another reason is to access any online payment data to get into people's bank accounts. If you are taking payments through a website you need top notch web security which can be expensive. As payments can be made using the banks over the phone I don't see the need for this function on a website. Not for a small one person business. 

  So anyway we are back up and running online. I'll now be taking online security more seriously and have got a firewall installed to prevent further interference. The rear lights of my car will be fixed next week. My diary should settle down and everything running smooth again soon. You need the difficult times to appreciate the good times. Yes indeed.

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New Cars and Cranky Calls

Hooray for the Financial Ombudsman. The dodgy car salesmen have been beaten.

A couple of years ago I was taken advantage of by unscrupulous car sales people who sold me a car on a PCP. They withheld important information from me the most important of which was the mileage limitations on the contract. Turns out I would be 30000 miles over the limit at the end of the contract with a whopping bill to pay. Only after I had switched the dual controls from my old car into the new car was the information placed before me just before closing time at the dealership. Too late for me to do anything without putting myself out of work. I had written about this at the time as I was very angry about it. I made a complaint to the financial ombudsman about financial misconduct and was fortunate to have enough evidence to support my case.

  A couple of years later and I am pleased to say that the management has changed at the dealership with a much more professional crew steering the ship. I went in there a few months back and managed to get in touch with the branch manager who took my complaint seriously and we began talking. I had all the excess mileage charges waived and dual controls fitted to the new car free of charge which saved me over £2000. The new PCP contract seems to make sense so I'm now back on track. Apart from a dodgy sensor which occasionally tells me the rear tyre is going down when it isn't the new car is fantastic. This will be my 5th Skoda Fabia in a row. All has ended well.

  On a totally different note there must be driving instructors out there who receive the odd crank call now and again as I have done recently. I get some guy ringing up at all hours of the night just saying my name over and over again. Spooky voicemails greet me in the morning. I  blocked the number but the voicemails still come through now and again which is a bit strange. Some person texted recently asking for driving lessons and when I couldn't fit him in immediately he started messaging me asking if I was from Grindr and using acronyms I didn't understand. Another number blocked from my phone. Hazards of having your phone number publicly available I suppose.

  Anyway with some luck the time of problem solving is over and it's time to enjoy another busy hard working summer. We can go out on the motorway now which should be fun. All the best to driving instructors and learners out there. Just keep rolling along.

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The New Driving Test

Are the changes to the driving test a good thing?

I've been having a look through the changes to the driving test and it certainly makes for interesting reading. I think overall the changes are a good thing and much more representative of everyday driving after passing the test. First off the bat is the increase in the independent driving to 20 minutes. This is a much more realistic test of normal everyday driving than being told exactly where to go all the time. Pupils have to be able to make their own decisions when they're out there on the road and this is examined to a higher standard with a longer independent drive.

  Following directions sat nav is also an important skill to be examined. The majority of drivers use them nowadays and I must admit I found sat navs really distracting when I first started to use them. I nearly hit the kerb once as I was watching the little car on the display instead of looking through the windscreen. I also noticed I was defering to the device to let me know about speed limits instead of looking out for signs. I reckon I'll buy the model that's being used on test so my pupils are familiar with the layout on the screen. This could make for some interesting lessons as well. Less time giving directions could mean more time observing how the pupil will actually drive after their test leading to more useful and realistic instruction and coaching.

  When it comes to the manoeuvres I would be loathe to remove the turn in the road. I regard this as a useful manoeuvre and it's certainly a commonly used one. It's a road blocker when being practiced which is a pain for the local folk but I will still continue to teach this one to a good standard. Good riddance to the left hand reverse I think. This is the one that pupils were the most skeptical about asking when they would use it after the test. This is probably a bigger pain to local residents than the turn in the road as it occurs at junctions and is somewhat unexpected. Many times I have asked my pupil to move forward out of the way of people trying to turn left. 

  Driving forward and reversing out of a parking bay is a welcome addition. This is what people do so they can get the shopping in the boot rather than reversing into the bay so it's good to get it right pre-test. I see many motorists reversing out of bays without any idea where they should be looking.

   The most controversial new addition is pulling up on the right, reversing back 2 car lengths and rejoining traffic. Depending on the volume of traffic this could be well tricky. It is something that people do when pulling up outside shops and things so good to see it being tested. I haven't started doing this yet so some solo practice is in order before I include it in lessons.

  Asking one of the show me tell me questions on the move is a good idea. Even the best pupils seem to have trouble with headlights and wiper switches when on the move even after the questions have been gone over in a car park. They just seem to forget where everything is once we're driving about. Good to have driving test candidates think about two things at once.

  All in all I think the changes are a good thing and help reflect the ways of modern driving. Let's hear it for progress and realism!

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Learner Drivers on Motorways? Yes Indeed

Should have happened many years ago I reckon.

The time is getting near when learner drivers will be allowed on motorways with a qualified Approved Driving Instructor in a dual controlled car. I regard motorway driving as an important part of driving knowledge and experience which should always have been included in the learning to drive syllabus from the very beginning. Depending on where people are learning to drive this isn't always possible. The nearest motorway could be a long way off and not be reachable on a standard driving lesson. Here in Nottingham we have easy access to the M1 which gives every driving instructor the opportunity to teach the skills necessary for safe motorway driving. This has been a wasted opportunity for learner drivers and the sooner we can get on there the better.

   According to research younger drivers who are fearful of driving on the motorway are taking routes along back roads where statistically they are more likely to have an accident. This situation seems ridiculous to me. Surely Motorways are an integral part of teaching safe driving for life? Instead motorway driving is viewed as an add on, not something which is strictly necessary and certainly not given the importance it deserves. I like many other driving instructors offer motorway training on it's own as well as part of the Pass Plus scheme. The take up on this type of training is very low. After paying a good amount for lessons it's hard to ask people to spend more after they have passed the L test. I hardly ever go out on the M1 with a learner. Those that do go out are always happy that they did and to be honest they pick it up pretty quickly. 

   Unfortunately the scariest part comes right at the beginning. Joining the motorway requires good judgement of speed to match the vehicles already on there. Too slow and you can head into danger very quickly. Signalling early and spotting a potential gap are skills that transfer to other situations so motorway training can improve the general standard of driving as a whole. The main difference in traffic is the number of heavy goods vehicles on there moving at speed. This can be terrifying for the nervous driver with no experience. Once on there things start to settle down with lane changing being the main skill being practiced. Many new drivers may have very limited experience of this depending on where they live. I find the instinctive thing they do before changing lanes is to slow down which is entirely the wrong thing to do. An hour on the motorway and the problem is cleared up producing an altogether better quality driver. Leaving the motorway and the drive onto smaller roads brings into play the skill of speed control. After doing 70mph trying to do 30mph can be a bit painful. Again we are helping to produce a more aware and skilled driver by coaching learners in how to deal with this. I think that learners will be in a much stronger position to pass the L test first time with the confidence they will have from being on a motorway.

    For a lot of us the motorway drive is a yearly event when we go on holiday. How much better would the traffic flow if all drivers got professional tuition before passing the test? It may help with those phantom traffic jams we all know and love. I personally can't wait to get out there with my learners. It will add interest to my working day and add some variation to my teaching. Happy motoring to you all and hope your roof sign doesn't blow off at high speed. Ha.

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