What were you taught when you learned to drive? Obviously moving off/stopping, changing gear, junctions and.…. What else?
One time, I was teaching a pupil how to parallel park, when a lady walked up to the car and tapped on the window. I prepared myself to apologise for using her car to practice with…
“That was very good,” (looking at Pei-Ei, my pupil) “I don’t have the confidence to park like that. I was never taught how to park.”
I thought about it. Neither was I.
Earlier in the Summer I had my first lesson with Marinda, a new pupil from Lossiemouth. She told me she had learned to drive in Aberdeen, but had failed her test there. Now she was settled in her new home she wanted another shot at passing her test. I spent the first 10 minutes just analysing her driving. Great, no problems apart from an understandable hesitancy. We drove to a car park and I asked her to reverse into one of the bays.
“How do I do that?”
(Stunned silence)
“I’ve not had to do that before.”
She explained that there were no parking bays at the Aberdeen test centre, so her previous instructor had never taught her how to do it.
Last month I gave a Pass Plus course to a girl from the far NW coast of Scotland. I met her in Inverness and explained the format of the lesson to her (Town Driving, Country Driving, Dual-carriageways, Motorways, Night Driving and Bad Weather Driving). When I asked her which of these she felt least comfortable with, she replied ‘Town Driving, because she had never done roundabouts before’! She passed her test in Ullapool, where there are no roundabouts, and had not come across any in her driving since her test. Sheep, yes. Roundabouts, no.
There is currently a debate on the BSM Instructor Forum about this matter. An instructor was to take a pupil for a test at Yeovil Test Centre and she wondered whether it was necessary to teach her pupil Bay Parking, as Yeovil TC had parking bays (her usual TC did not). Immediate outcry that OF COURSE she should teach Bay Parking TO ALL HER PUPILS. Quite right, but, although she was a new instructor, it was worrying that she should even ask the question. It implied that she (like too many others) was just teaching pupils to pass their test, rather than teaching them to be a good driver.
My wife, Jane, taught her daughters, Rachel and Anna, to drive as soon as they reached 17. She taught them how to deal with multi-storey car parks because she remembered how nervous she was the first time she had to park in one after passing her own test. As far as I know, there are only 2 multi-storey car parks within 100 miles from here, but since Jane told me this, I have been teaching this skill to many of my pupils, even though they will NEVER get this on a test.
A bit 'holier-than-thou' and preach-y today, wasn’t it? Never mind, cheer yourself up with today’s t’riffic tune
http://www.last.fm/music/Bran+Van+3000/Discosis (click on the 'play' arrow before 'Speed'- sorry it's only a wee snippet, I'll try to find a longer clip).
(and, next time, I’ll be less serious and give you a tune that is NOT by a band whose name begins with ‘B’)
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