Diary Of An ADI

Well done to Sean, who passed first time today with just 5 driver faults. It’s all about keeping it in the family, because his brother also passed with me first time last year, too.

Mind you, there is a big difference between them.

And remember what I said. You don’t want an Audi A3 – they’re pratmobiles, and the only reason for having one is to behave like prat. That’s what everyone else who has an Audi does. That tosser driving one who cut us up, then undertook the lorry and sped off, and who we then passed at lights is proof of that.

Something I saw on a forum reminded me of the simple fact that you should never judge a book by its cover!

The discussion in question revolves around instructor training – teaching people to become ADIs. It’s a hot topic in the industry, because virtually no ADI who is currently on the register believes that anyone else should be allowed to join it. They have the same opinion of the trainee (“pinkie”) system – they may well have utilised that route to becoming an ADI themselves, but woe betide anyone else who tries it!

A couple of comments centre around the issue of whether someone is “cut out to be an instructor”.

As I write this, I’m trying hard to think of any job out there – I hate calling this one a “profession” when I see and hear some of those who do it – where it is a closed shop, and no one else is allowed to do it because admission to the Hallowed Halls is blocked.

If you are prepared to do the training, and to fight to grow your subsequent career, you can be anything you want to be – and I mean that in both the absolute sense (i.e. no one can stop you), and the relative sense (i.e. try hard enough and pass the tests, and you’re in). It doesn’t have to be a Divine Calling any more than it should be a Divine Right. This is precisely the way it should be.

Teaching people to drive isn’t rocket science. And, whether ADIs like it or not, the sole responsibility of an instructor is to teach new drivers enough to pass the test and to be safe enough to go out and gain more experience on the roads. It’s always been like that and, unless the minimum age for driving is raised to 35, it always will be!

In the end, all it is is a job. A simple, day-to-day job.

It is NOT the ADI’s responsibility if the newly-qualified driver chooses not to continue to learn or drive safely. It is NOT the ADI’s responsibility to change someone’s fundamental behaviour or character. And – extreme cases notwithstanding – it is NOT the ADI’s responsibility to decide if someone should be allowed to learn to drive or not.

This is where an ex-pupil of mine comes to mind from some years ago.

He was a really nice lad, and he had a good job with good prospects. But he was not a natural driver. Sometimes, I despaired at how I would ever get him to test standard and – in all honesty – in my own mind I was often hoping that he’d realise for himself that for his own sake, and everyone else out there on the roads, he’d give up the idea of learning to drive and stick to buses.

But I was totally wrong. You see, my feelings were based purely on my own enjoyment of the lessons sometimes (i.e. frustration) and my awareness of how much it was costing him (i.e. what I though his perception of me might be). He didn’t see it that way at all – he was always upbeat and was adamant that he was still learning, even when I was convinced we’d not moved forward at all when I compared my lesson notes from previous weeks.

In the end, he was with me for over two years, and he spent more that £4,000 on lessons. But he passed at the third attempt. I know for a fact that he is happily – and safely – driving every day now.

So, taking all this one step further back, and considering the trainee instructor rather than the trainee driver, does anyone have the right to declare who can and who can’t do this job? No!

It doesn’t matter if someone has been made redundant from their job and is now considering becoming an ADI. As long as they know the risks, the choice is theirs – certainly not mine. They don’t have to be über-dedicated, or be hand-picked by the Heavenly Host because all they’re doing is a job. They’re trying to support themselves financially. And if they don’t provide a good service then they’ll fail – which is simply part of the risk they assume when they decide to become ADIs.

The people who are always blaming new ADIs and trainees for their own predicament, and who believe that this job is a calling of some kind, should perhaps take a step back and look at their own position in a little more detail..

Many are so disillusioned and bitter – and have been for so many years now – that they come across as considerably less dedicated to the job than the people who’ve just been laid off from the local coal mine and who want to become instructors. And until a couple of years ago, they blamed Red Driving School for everything.

Now it appears to be anyone who is offering instructor training.

Yes, it would be nice if we could make it a closed shop, and have the ultimate say in who gets kicked off the register just because we’re having a tough time at the moment (as though the rest of the world isn’t). But that isn’t going to happen. Nor should it.

An email alert has just been sent out by the DSA. You can view it here.

It reminds everyone that from Monday 23 January, the Theory Test will not consist of questions that have previously been published anywhere else. This change has been introduced to stop people memorising the answers, and to make them at least try to understand what it is they are supposed to be learning.

Until now, the questions would have been easily available in the exact form they would be asked on the Theory Test itself. However, as of today the only questions published will be practice questions – not the actual ones.

The email quotes Mike Penning, the Road Safety Minister:

“By bringing a stop to publication of theory test questions we aim to encourage candidates to prepare by learning each topic area thoroughly rather than just memorising the questions and answers.

“The intention is to improve candidates’ knowledge and understanding of driving theory, so that they are more able to retain and apply it when they are on the road.”

Bearing in mind Penning’s involvement so far – and the fact that his “in-depth knowledge” of the driver training industry apparently comes form his daughter, who Penning considers to be the only young person in the entire universe ever to have taken driving lessons, and who fed him a few stories about her training – I doubt that the change will have quite the outcome he thinks it will.

There are around 1,000 questions in the question bank. I can absolutely promise you that the number of people out there who, since the Theory Test was introduced, memorised them all can be counted on the fingers of one hand!

Most young people don’t do anywhere near enough revision for the Theory Test, and they only pass because it is so bloody easy. I know several of mine who have passed it without a single minute of revision – and certain web forums, where immature student types hang out, are rife with childish advice along the lines of “don’t revise or buy any study materials – you’ll pass it easily without them”. Passing is all that matters to them.

The problem with the Theory Test is that it is dumbed down. For example, there are a load of questions in it all about whether you can use a mobile phone when driving. The answer is “no” – but the questions are just convoluted re-wordings of the same fundamental question with the same fundamental answer. The only thing that is going to change is that there will be a heap of different re-wordings for the test itself, and another heap for the “practice material”, where there was only a single heap before! Big deal.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m all for turning the test into something which actually requires learning in order to pass it, but it was never that in the first place. To be worthwhile, it has to be challenging. And to be challenging, it needs to be relatively difficult to pass. But there are too many bleeding hearts out there who wouldn’t want that – and that includes ADIs as well as politicians anxious to secure votes.

This change is just fiddling with an item which, in the context of the proposed “benefits”, was already faulty. No one has the guts to throw the baby out with the bathwater and introduce something which is better.

This is one of those unfortunate “I told you so” moments. Kodak (or, Eastman Kodak, to give it its full name) has filed for bankruptcy after 132 years in business.

The familiar yellow and red logo is one I’ll always associate with my seaside holidays as a child, and the annual purchase of a suitable film cartridge for the old Kodak Instamatic to take with me.

However, I bought my first digital camera (a Casio QV-10) in 1995 – that’s nearly 17 years ago. I absolutely KNEW these things were the future, even if the QV-10 by itself wasn’t.

The QV-10 couldn’t possibly have been selected over an Instamatic when it came down to quality and resolution, but within 5 years a digital camera was easily up to the job of taking holiday snaps (even if printers weren’t, at the time).

Unfortunately, Kodak failed to realise this, and it waited for too long before trying to ride the wave. To be fair, it did climb on board the digital train – possibly a little late – but its real mistake was trying to bring the old film-based business along with it when it eventually made the jump. As a result, its digital printers (which are pretty good), are only now getting close to making a profit for the company. So it came too late.

Part of the original problem is still being echoed by those “saddened” to hear of Kodak’s troubles. A Photography Professor at Toronto University (hey, Canada has Mickey Mouse subjects, too) wails:

There’s a kind of emotional connection to Kodak for many people. You could find that name inside every American household and, in the last five years, it’s disappeared.

And a 69-year old Kodak employee says much the same:

It’s one of the few companies that wiggled its way into the fabric of American life and the American family.

‘As someone at Kodak once said, `We put chemicals in one end so our customers can get memories out the other.’

It’s precisely that attitude that got Kodak in the mess in the first place. You don’t move forward by standing still! Firms who do that simply die.

Kodak won’t disappear, of course. There’s too much American emotion involved for that to happen.

Doing my usual thing, I was flicking through the music channels last night before going to sleep. I was quickly jumping through the “[Insert Channel Name] Introduces…” crap they’re all doing at the moment before they switch over to Teleshopping at 3am, making my way inexorably to Vintage TV in the hope that there might be some classic rock on (instead of 40s big-band stuff or 80s disco – last night it was the latter).

As I skipped through Kerrang, there was a video on which was just ending and – Sod’s Law – they didn’t have the squiggly graphics to tell you who it was. It sounded great.

Fortunately, a casual Google search threw up Evarose – and that’s who it turned out to be. They also come up quite a lot on YouTube.

Definitely one to watch. I’ve already got them tagged so I can find out about impending tours.

I saw this story in the newsfeeds. The original story from last year is here.

Cassie McCord was 16, and a student in Colchester. In February last year, she was hit – as she walked on the pavement – by an 87-year old driver. She died from her injuries later.

The driver, Colin Horsfall, had already been warned by police to stop driving after he went into the EXIT of a garage and ran into trees.

He failed an on-the-spot eye check during this particular incident, but refused to surrender his licence. Police have no powers to ban people immediately. Unbelievably, this happened just three days before he killed Cassie, so she’d obviously still have been alive today if Horsfall had been forcibly removed from the roads.

A verdict of unlawful killing was returned. Horsfall was injured in the incident and died  – apparently from his injuries – several months later. This was recorded as accidental death. So, as well as deliberately continuing to drive when he was clearly completely incapable of doing so safely, he was also never brought to task over Cassie’s death.

Cassie’s mother, Jackie, has set up an e-petition asking that police be given the power to temporarily suspend drivers in such circumstances. It has the backing of the police, who also suggest that they should be allowed to confiscate vehicles as well. I fully agree. People like Colin Horsfall are absolute menaces. Horsfall was by no means unique.

You can view the petition and sign it here (or click the image). I urge everyone to do so – getting these types of dangerous drivers off the roads permanently is one of the best things the government could do.

I expect you’ve seen that advert with Vinnie Jones, advertising “hands-only CPR” for the British Heart Foundation. It’s quite amusing. But the thing that caught my attention is that – yet again – first aid procedures are being changed.

This used to happen regularly when I was in the rat race, and I’m convinced it was a ploy to make sure that anyone who’d received first aid training (at significant expense) would have to do it again for his or her skills to remain valid in a legal sense.

Any large company with first aid staff who don’t have up-to-date training may well as just burn all their money and shut up shop right now. And by “up-to-date”, that means “the latest fads”.

The “compression-only” variant appears to be of American origin, where (according to Wikipedia):

It is recommended as the method of choice for the untrained rescuer or those who are not proficient as it is easier to perform and instructions are easier to give over the phone.

Obviously, you need some scientific backing for such dumbing down, so it adds:

In adults with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, compression-only CPR by the lay public has a higher success rate than standard CPR.

My first thought would be “why”. But, it does appear to be quite specific. But then it adds more:

The exceptions are cases of drownings, drug overdose, and arrest in children. Children who receive compression only CPR have the same outcomes as those who received no CPR. The method of delivering chest compressions remains the same, as does the rate (at least 100 per minute). It is hoped that the use of compression only delivery will increase the chances of the lay public delivering CPR. As per the American Heart Association, the beat of the Bee Gees’ song Stayin’ Alive provides an ideal amount of beats-per-minute to use for hands-only CPR. For those with non cardiac arrest and people less than 20 years of age standard CPR is superior to compression only CPR.

That last sentence interests me. Those “under 20” appear to be “children” as far as this account is concerned. The UK is simplifying the whole affair by advising “hands-only” for everyone!

And we have to face facts, here. The fact that traditional CPR frequently involves mouth-to-mouth resuscitation (where the lips of one stranger have to meet those of another) definitely has something to do with this. If nothing else, people resuscitating when the casualty is actually already breathing may have a part to play – not to mention the simple physical contact involved.

It looks like the evidence (clearly based on statistics) that “hands-only” CPR is better is a lot more confused than they’d have you believe. In the meantime, company execs in the UK will need to start shovelling money into wheelbarrows to take round to the local First Aid Training groups. Again.

Sometimes, you just have to smile. I noticed that there’s a bit of a disagreement going on at the moment about the use of emails to advertise goods and services, and the definition of “spam”.

It’s an interesting one, because if I get an email from someone out of the blue, it’s apparently “spam” if I don’t want the service. But what if I do? What if the service was one I didn’t know about? Is it “spamming” to tell people about it? To advertise?

But that’s not specifically my point. In the case I have in mind, one of the services being offered is a register of only Grade 5 and 6 instructors, with the argument that we’ve got to push quality in the industry forwards. A couple of things, though:

• Grade 4s are not always inferior to Grade 5s and 6s
• Grade 4s are perfectly acceptable as far as the DSA – the people who call the shots – are concerned

So, where’s this oxymoron at, then? Well, one of the other services on offer is a register intensive driving course providers throughout the UK!

Now, this is strictly my own opinion – and it’s also right – but intensive training is designed absolutely and specifically to get people to pass the driving test in the shortest time possible. It isn’t about “safe driving for life”. Even if someone offering it pretends not to be just doing it to get people through the test, the simple fact is that gaining driving experience requires time on the road, and signing up for an intensive course which allows you to go from absolute novice to driving a Ferrari (but probably an Audi) in less than a fortnight (usually a week) is hardly pushing quality in the industry forwards.

I’m not criticising anyone’s advertising or entrepreneurial moxie in any way. Nor do I see it as spam (like some others seem to do) – it’s just simple advertising, and you can take it or leave it. It just seems odd to me that two totally conflicting variables are in the equation.

On a related note, a local Chinese restaurant has signs up outside advertising its Chinese New Year party, which appears to take place over two nights. They say:

Chinese Lion Dance + ABBA Tribute

Chinese Lion Dance + Elvis Tribute

Not quite oxymorons. But nearly.

I was looking for some suitable storage jars for my spices – they needed to be airtight, of course, otherwise there’s no point using them, and the contents will go off.

Now, I don’t know why I didn’t just go for Kilner Jars in the first place (well, I tried, but there were no obvious stockists locally), so I started looking around. And I found that ASDA do hinged-lid jars of various sizes. There was a gushing review of the things from some dizzy woman on a foodie website somewhere, so I went into the store and bought a few.

They’re bloody useless! I sensed something was wrong when I noticed that as the locking mechanism moves past its highest point, the tension is released slightly. You can see the rubber seal actually leaving the glass as it does so. So it meant that my Paprika could be sprinkled out even when the lid was tight shut – which obviously means it is exposed to air, and that’s deadly for Paprika.

Another test with water revealed that the jars – all of them – cannot hold liquid, and it pours out through the seal at a fairly fast rate. A total waste of money.

So instead I bought some proper Kilner Jars with hinged lids. These are the real McCoy and – ironically – cost less that the bloody ASDA things (well, from the Jam Jar Shop, at least).

A reader submitted this link concerning the new MoT rules which have come into force.

It’s a bit alarmist, claiming that the rules “may trash your car”. After all, at least two of the examples it cites – faulty ABS and faulty seat-belt pre-tensioners – are very important, and failing an MoT because they’re broken serves the owner right.

I mean, if you’re going to insist on owning a car, you automatically accept that you need to keep it in a condition that isn’t going to kill other people (including your passengers). If you can’t afford it – or if you disagree with that responsibility – then you also accept the consequences, and tough luck!

VOSA – the Vehicle and Operator Service Agency, who manage MoT regulations – will not fully implement the changes until April. So at least that gives people some time to get things sorted out.

The article advises buying a 90s banger if you want to avoid the costly electronic gizmo hassle. Unfortunately, it glosses over that other major MoT problem. RUST. Not to mention mechanical wear-and-tear.

I’m not sure what my view on the EU-driven legislation is, because it doesn’t really concern me. However, just because people can’t afford it, or don’t like EU-legislation of any kind, isn’t a reason for it to be wrong.

Mind you, cars should be roadworthy – and many aren’t. So in that respect, I know what my view is!