Rat race.

Once again, a bit of snow seems to be bringing havoc to the roads.
It's funny how a few inches of snow in England becomes HEADLINE NEWS when far worse conditions north of the border rarely get more than the briefest of mentions. The reporter on Breakfast just now said "Here, in Worcestershire, we had half a centimetre of snow overnight." that's not news! That barely even qualifies as 'weather'.
Driving is all about reading the road ahead and making adjustments for the conditions. 'Conditions' include traffic and road conditions, not just weather.
One of life's little pleasures is watching other drivers NOT reading the road ahead. Admittedly this is morally dubious, like watching Alex Ferguson's blood pressure rise when things aren't going his way.
The A96, the road linking Inverness and Aberdeen, is great for Bad Driver watching. In general, it is a fairly free-flowing 60mph road (apart from the occasional tractor driver who is less considerate than most tractor drivers). In a perfect world, with good weather conditions, everyone would be driving at 57 - 60mph on the straights, easing of the accelerator in good time for the bends and roundabouts, and keeping a minimum of a 2 second gap between them and the vehicle ahead....... "in a perfect world". But, as we are reminded every day, this isn't a perfect world. There are plenty of drivers that drive at speeds significantly less than appropriate. But, who knows, maybe they are transporting something fragile? Maybe they....... (I'm struggling to think of other valid reasons for driving far too slow for the conditions). And, of course, there are plenty of drivers who think that speed limits do not apply to them, as A & E units (and undertakers) around the country will testify.
Almost every day I travel along the A96. What fascinates me is wondering what on earth its going on in the heads of some of the drivers? Early morning and late afternoon, there will usually be a continuous stream of vehicles in each direction, at consistent speeds of 50 - 60 mph. Let's take the 16 mile journey from Nairn to Inverness as an example:
In a perfect world, with everyone travelling at 60mph (and ignoring the slowing down for the three roundabouts), it would take 16 minutes to complete the journey. If, heaven forbid, you had to 'endure' sitting in traffic at 55mph, you would reach your destination a mere 87 seconds later. Even if the flow of traffic was down to 50mph, your journey would still only take a fraction over 3 minutes longer. I am sure that no-one would ever mind setting their alarm clock 4 minutes earlier (so they could allow a few minutes extra for their journey), yet so many people seem to hate sitting in steadily flowing traffic, a touch under the speed limit. Consequently, I watch with fascination/ horror/ amusement as drivers take sometimes considerable risks (and use a lot more fuel) to overtake a car or two, wait a couple of miles for another overtaking opportunity, overtake another car, wait for another opportunity etc. It so often happens that the Audi (and other cars), sitting right up behind me as I head out of Nairn, is maybe 5 or 6 vehicles (= 20 seconds) ahead of me as we reach Inverness.
Even if, like some Audi drivers, you don't believe the speed limit applies to you and you raced to Inverness at 70mph, you would only arrive just over 2 minutes before someone sticking to the speed limit. Meanwhile, you have used significantly more fuel, risked a fine, points on your license and, most importantly, risked the lives of others.
I love driving. I love the sensation of speed. And I will overtake when it is safe and necessary to do so. But I also love getting to my destination early simply because I allowed plenty of time of time for the journey, not because I risked overtaking every vehicle in front of me.
Do yourself a favour - leave a few minutes earlier and leave the anxiety and blood pressure to Alex Ferguson.

110% Pass Rate

Who doesn't use Google these days? Does anyone use Yahoo, Alta Vista, Ask Jeeves, Cuil, Lycos, Excite or Dogpile anymore? I thought I would give Microsoft's Bing a try this morning. I typed in 'Driving instructor' and added various locations and was then alarmed to see that it came up 'Martin's Driving: My pass rate plummets'. Not really what I want people to see when they are searching for a driving instructor! Of course, this was a link to a previous post where, after picking up my new car I had a run of passes (so, 100%), but one fail in seven tests dropped my pass rate (in my new car) to 86%.
So, to counter this adverse publicity I thought I had better write this post so that anyone in Lossiemouth, Elgin, Forres, Nairn, Inverness, Culloden, Ullapool, etc looking for a driving instructor might be enticed by Bing listing this post's title instead of the 'pass rate plummets' title. Yes, I know it is impossible to have a pass rate of 110%, but if footballers and talent show contestants are allowed to say they "Gave it 110%", why can't I?
I'm sticking with Google in future.

(Edit: I totted up my pupils' test results since I started Farle Driving School at the start of July and, over 36 tests, there have been 27 passes and 9 fails - A not-too-shabby pass rate of 75%. On the X Factor  this weekend Simon Cowell just made some reference to "One hundred million percent".... That would be an impressive pass rate)