I had a rather unpleasant discussion today with a local resident in a popular training area that I use with my learner drivers. I’m sure this will sound all too familiar to fellow driving instructors out there. We have all been irritated by learner drivers at one time or another, but we all had to start somewhere.
As a responsible driving instructor I always try not to use the same roads day after day. It’s not very entertaining for me to be driving around the same areas all the time and I am crucially aware that using the same areas that are popular with driving instructors is very annoying to the residents in that particular area. Where I teach people to drive, we have a perfect training area. It’s a lovely quiet housing estate with wide roads, and very few parked cars; gentle slopes for beginning hill starts and clutch control; lots of roads that link up making it ideal to teach junctions without going round and round in small circles. You are able to come out onto the main A road for a short distance to introduce traffic lights and more traffic, then turn back into the estate further up. It’s not a small estate and the residents are mainly elderly. Until the recent change in test routes, these roads weren’t even on driving test routes so there’s not much chance of getting in the way of a driving test when you are teaching the basics to a new student.
Today I was using this training area with a young lad on his very first lesson. We had several goes at moving off and stopping successfully and it becomes inevitable that at some point you have to turn a corner. We attempted a quiet left turn into a side road, all very safe, no traffic or pedestrians about. Unfortunately as is often the case on the first go at steering he got a bit muddled, wasn’t steering enough and to make matters worse he pushed the accelerator too. With a few quick instructions from me he got off the accelerator, and got his steering under control, all be it that we were on the wrong side of the road we had turned into. I pointed this out and he began to come back nicely to the correct position on the left. Unfortunately he pushed the accelerator too hard again and shot across the road too quickly so I had to step in with my dual brake and clutch, bringing the car to a stop with the front near side wheel just on the kerb.
I’m aware that this sequence of events to many will sound horrific, dangerous, maybe a bit comical and stereotypical of a learner driver. This chain of events can be viewed very differently to many people. My pupil was a little scared by how hard it became to co-ordinate the controls of the car, he had managed moving off and stopping in a straight line beautifully. Just adding to that steering around a corner at very low-speed in first gear suddenly became very difficult to do.
My perception of the incident was very different. Firstly I was aware before anything went wrong that there were no other road users around. Therefore when my student managed to regain control of the steering I already knew that having straightened up on the wrong side of the road, although wrong and potentially dangerous, was causing no harm at all because there was nobody there. Secondly when the student, on trying to correct his road position, inadvertently pushed the accelerator too hard, I was ready and quick to bring the car to a halt, having already assessed that there was still nobody around to cause any harm to.
The resident who was in her garden at the time saw things very differently and came over to tell me so. I’m sure to this lady who was quietly working in her garden, my car sounded very much out of control and scary. As we were only in first gear the engine revved up very loud when I used the dual control clutch to prevent the car completely mounting the pavement. Unfortunately despite my best efforts to reassure this lady that I would never allow an accident to occur, and I was able to take control of the car, I think this lady had seen one too many learners today and needed to let off steam saying people shouldn’t be allowed on the road if they can’t drive and that someone is going to be killed soon. I partially agreed saying it would be wonderful to be able to teach the basics of car control off-road, but sadly there are no such facilities available.
We all had to learn to drive somewhere, and I completely understand how frustrating it must be for the residents who live in these ideal locations that attract the driving instructors in their droves. But what is the answer? Several years ago I used to take part in pre-driver training at two local secondary schools. This proved excellent for the 6th form students to learn some basic car control skills on playgrounds and tennis courts. Having a large area to be able to teach moving off and stopping, and steering techniques to all 16 or 17 year olds would be great so that when they begin to drive on real roads they know what they are doing. Unfortunately its a luxury very few instructors have access to.
