Just down the road from my house is the village primary school. Just behind my house is the village hall, with a small car-park. Inevitably, when parents arrive to drop off or collect their children, they tend to park along the road, as close to the school as possible, rather than park in the car-park. It's only for a few minutes (usually), so it causes us little inconvenience. Every now and then, a parent will park in front of our drive. We know when school starts/ends so, if we anticipate leaving the house around those times, we simply park in the car-park so that we don't get blocked in.
As driving instructors, we have to be careful not to antagonise local residents. Not so much now, but it used to be quite common to see several driving schools all doing 3-point turns ('Turn-in-the-road's if you insist) on the same stretch of road. A ridiculous situation and it must have been irritating to locals using that road. In a few locations, complaints to the DSA have led to the Chief examiner asking driving schools not to use those areas for tuition.
You hear similar stories all over Britain. I particularly liked the story of an estate in England where the local residents repeatedly complained about driving schools using the surrounding roads. All the instructors got together and agreed with those residents that they would no longer drive on those roads. Of course, the residents satisfaction was short-lived when they discovered that no driving school would collect or return pupils on that estate.
The fact is, driving instructors tend to be far more considerate of where they drive and park than most drivers. And when we teach our pupils the very basics of moving off and stopping we emphasise that we look to stop somewhere that is Safe, Legal and Convenient.
So it was particularly disappointing what happened to me today.
We were nearing the end of the lesson and my pupil was approaching a very blind T-junction. Her initial approach was good, but she let the car creep out a bit too fast and I used the dual brakes. I wanted her to pull over so that we could discuss her approach. The road ahead had a row of terraced cottages on the left with double-yellow lines along most of the road. At a few intervals were parking spaces (about 3 cars long) reserved for permit holders. There was not one single car parked on this road. I asked my pupil to pull over in one of the parking spaces so that we could briefly discuss the last junction. We were not parking there, we were pausing there. While we analysed her approach to the junction and the possible consequences, a car (and, of course, it had to be an Audi) approached from ahead and parked on our side of the road, stopping barely six inches from the front of our car. The woman driving the car got out and, without a glance at us, entered the cottage immediately next to her car. My pupil and I were both slightly stunned by this – she must surely have seen us in the car and been aware that we would now have to reverse before we could move off.
Less than a minute later we had analysed the fault and agreed to drive round and approach the junction again. My pupil started the car and, just as we were about to reverse, the woman who had 'parked' the Audi came out of the cottage and started waving something at me. I asked my pupil to turn off the car and I opened the window. I then realised that she was waving a resident's parking permit at me. I apologised and explained that I had asked my pupil to pull up, just for a moment, to discuss the junction. “Well you should be teaching her the rules of the road, such as where she shouldn't park!” was her sharp reply.
There were no other cars parked, so it was not as though we were occupying the only space outside her cottage. It was obvious that it was a pupil learning to drive and not someone who had ignorantly parked their car and gone off somewhere. It was obvious that the woman had parked her car in such a way to inconvenience us as much as possible. It was obvious that she was an arse.
As tempting as it was to spell this out to her, it does me no good to antagonise the situation, so I apologised and assured her that we would not stop there in future.
I think my pupil was as stunned by this woman's attitude as I was and we were both silent for a few seconds as we drove away. I tried to divert our thoughts by talking my pupil through her approach to the next couple of junctions, but my mind was still distracted by this woman's actions. Even now, several hours later, it still niggles me.
Pupils have to learn to drive somewhere and the large majority of people who complain about driving schools will themselves have learned to drive at some time. As I have said before, my pupils learn from the examples of others, good and bad. If I see an example of good, considerate driving, I will highlight this to my pupils and encourage them to follow this example. If we see bad practice we can learn how not to do things.
So, perhaps I should look at the positives. Not only did my pupil learn how to correctly approach a blind T-junction, but she also learned how not to be an arse.
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