Diary Of An ADI

Archive for December, 2009

Another story from The Sun, to do with the weather again. There is also a fuller write-up in The Telegraph:

Look how slick the road is with ice, and the locals had warned the driver not to try and move the car. People could hardly keep their footing on the pavements. This is why… a video taken in Paignton, Devon.

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Again, it reminds me of those dickheads who advocate going out in bad weather to teach pupils, no matter what. At some point conditions become such that skidding avoidance is impossible (unless you just stay indoors).

Mind you, once again the decision to hold back on any road treatment by the local authorities has to be questioned (by the time this happened, the temperature had been at or below freezing for over a week).

Incidentally, don’t forget to have a look at the Ice-dancing Seat On A Hill video I have posted.

And don’t forget the Worst Parking Ever (Cars Remix) video, also on this site.

While I was looking for something else, I came across this story from The Sun dating back to October this year.

This is a classic case of what I call a Weasel Boy – imagine him behind you in traffic: you see a black pratmobile, spotty little oik barely able to see over the steering wheel, ears sticking out so in silhouette he looks like a wingnut, trying to get past you in any way he can.

But Ajmal Khan contacted The Sun to boast that he’d passed his test first time purely from skills learnt during joyriding. He even boasted that the car he passed his test in was not insured. The Sun has reported him to The DSA.

Khan wasn’t happy with the article, and according to this other story in Luton Today he is going to sue. The Sun says it taped the interview and is confident it can deflect any claim. But better still, Khan claims in this further story in The Bedforshire News that his call to The Sun was a hoax.

Khan had better make his mind up which story he’s going with, as it seems he has three different ones across three newspapers. The bit I like is where it describes him as ‘a student’. One thing you can be sure of, if he IS a student then it will be at one of those fun local colleges that do joke courses, and not a proper Uni.

I saw this story in The Sun (online) today – the YouTube video is actually titled “Worst Woman Driver I Have Ever Seen“:

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She takes 4½ minutes to park – on yellow lines and in a taxi rank – in a space which is easily big enough to drive forwards into in a nice, smooth movement. She then reverses backwards and forwards without actually getting any closer to the kerb – in fact, she gets further away and causes an obstruction on the main road. Even when she does get the back wheels closer to the kerb, she’s too stupid to turn the steering wheel and bring the front in. She finally gets it almost (but not quite) straight.

This apparently took place in Coventry and was filmed by student Ian Kane from his student digs overlooking the road.

According to the article, the clip is being used by driving instructors as a lesson in how NOT to park. The woman has never been identified… I guess it is literally like looking for a needle in a haystack, isn’t it?

I love this story from the Daily Mail today! 

Umit Tuncel Alongside BSM Fiat 500

Umit Tuncel is 7′ 1″ (seven feet one inches) tall, has size 15 feet, and he is learning to drive with BSM in one of their new Fiat 500s. 

When you look around the BSM forums, and listen to the rhetoric in the test centre waiting rooms, you’d be forgiven for thinking that only people under 5 foot can even get through the door. An inside leg measurement of greater than 22 inches and you’ll be crippled for life – and a hundred Polar Bears will die if you try. Oooh. And several hundred metres of Arctic ice will disappear. 

What nonsense! 

Umit Inside The Fiat 500

The pictures clearly show that even someone this big can safely drive a Fiat 500. However, I’m sure some of the ex-BSM-know-it-alls will explain to us (via the forums) that he can’t possibly drive the car safely… just by looking at these photos. 

If Umit can drive one, just about anyone can! If someone really does have problems driving a Fiat 500, I suspect they’d have trouble in quite a few cars. 

Umit’s instructor says he is a good driver, and he has his test booked for February. Good luck to him. 

EDIT 30/12/2009: What IS funny is that this story hasn’t been picked up on the normal forums (with one exception, and even there people are persisting with the ‘Noddy car’ gag). I guess it is because it goes against peoples collective beliefs – they want to believe the Fiat 500 is rubbish because they want to believe BSM is bad. But it does show that you have to be careful what you listen to when you scour the Internet. Information can be very one-sided as a result of this bias.

I had to go somewhere on Christmas Eve – a long drive south in snow and fog. I knew it was going to be a potentially risky journey, so I took special care.

You see, the night before – bearing in mind the many, many roads our illustrious Nottingham City and County Councils had seen fit not to grit – we had a strange combination of weather. The roads were already slick with compacted snow, and what first happened was that is rained heavily on top of this.

I’m not sure if those who work for the councils are aware of what happens when you pour water on top of ice when the outside temperature is at or below freezing, but if they do they certainly don’t seem to care.

After about half an hour of rain, the precipitation turned progressively through sleet and then to heavy snow. I should say that about another 1cm or more fell by the time it stopped.

Now, just imagine the surface that resulted from the following:

1. compacted and untreated sheet ice
2. water at 0°C
3. partially frozen water (sleet)
4. frozen water (snow)
5. further compaction by vehicles
6. sub-sero temperatures

I didn’t have to drive on this, fortunately (though there were some rural roads in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire closed for similar reasons). But listening to the radio as I started my journey on Christmas Eve, it appears that conditions Wednesday night and Thursday morning were some of the worst in memory. Police had had to close roads on just about any hill (according to the radio) because it was impossible to get up them. But unlike Gloucs and Wilts, where it was a few isolated rural roads they had closed, at least some of these in Nottingham were in the centre of the the City (Mapperley and Carlton).

Last night (Christmas Day evening) the temperature stayed above freezing and a lot of the snow finally began to melt properly – although the compacted and untreated surfaces are even more treacherous in this state. The roads have been iced over for a whole week, yet the Nottingham City and County Councils have done almost nothing.

The last week has cost me at least £400 in lost income.

Still, at least the councils saved some rock salt, eh?

I was browsing one of the forums frequented by driving instructors, and saw a post from someone who plans to send a monthly newsletter (or text) to his pupils from the start of the New Year! He hopes it will drum up some new work this way.

I wish him well – and I hope he enjoys the extra work he’ll be giving himself.

In my experience, people want to learn to drive as quickly as possible (thus spending as little as they need to). Some of them will have tried spending as little as humanly possible, of course, but will then have realised you get what you pay for…! Any interaction with them between lessons tends to be along the lines of “when is my next lesson?, “can I cancel my next lesson?, “I want to book a lesson”, and so on. On the occasions when I have given my own pupils what you could call ‘homework’ (e.g. “find out what that sign means” or “how do you know the speed limit here is 30mph” – usually ending with “you’ve passed the Theory Test, after all”), it’s odds on they won’t bother without a couple of further lessons with me repeatedly prompting them to do it. And even when they eventually do look it up, you know they are only doing it to shut you up and will likely as not forget it again by the next lesson.

There is a breed of ADI out there these days who believes that they can change the world just because they are driving instructors. They believe that because someone spends two hours a week with you (much of which time is spent concentrating on the road and driving the car), you have the capability to turn them into model citizens who will grow up into Prime Ministers, Chancellors of the Exchequer, world-renowned surgeons, and so on.

It’s a nice thought, but these people really do need to get a serious reality check.

By definition, most pupils are just average members of society. I’m not saying ‘average’ is a bad thing – it’s just statistics, after all. I find the brightest ones often have the biggest problems with driving basics, whereas the hoodie types seem to take to it like ducks to water. But most are just average people (like me).

I am merely a driving instructor and, as luck would have it, I do teach people to drive. I don’t take shortcuts – but I do aim to train them as effectively as possible, so they don’t spend more money than they have to. I don’t just teach them to pass the test – I want them to at least know how to handle the car when they start driving around on their own and perhaps get into situations they have never come across before.

But if they get pissed and end up in a fight every Friday night (and the number of people who don’t want Saturday lessons because they are going out Friday night is huge), spending two hours a week in the car with me is not going to alter that behaviour in any way at all – even if I wanted to interfere with their private life. For Heaven’s sake, if their parents can’t do it I don’t see how I can.

That’s not to say I don’t make my opinions on these matters known. And if they do tell me anything about their private life, I do pass comment. And I will never condone bad or illegal behaviour. But I am not going to piss them off by turning into their mum or dad – they paid me to teach them how to drive, not to nag them.

This is why any attempt to provide additional training on my part would always emphasise that it is voluntary - so I can let them know where to look, or what extra training is available, but the rest is up to them. I definitely wouldn’t want to risk spamming them over it!

I was playing with my new in-car camera last week and came across something you don’t really see very often when you are driving along.

moobarb Cow On A Trailer

I had to do a double-take when I saw it… but I also had to look it up when I got home to see what moobarb was all about (the van gave no clue, as far as I could see).

I thought it might be an organic dairy, or possibly some refreshing new yoghurt drink… something like that anyway.

It’s actually pretty boring (to me, at least): they are a furniture supplier.

However, it goes to show how effective some forms of advertising can be. This particular one might be lost on some people: I am definitely not one to be taken in by hype and most advertising leaves me cold, but seeing this really got me wondering what it was all about.

Maybe driving instructors could learn a thing or two here. Driving school advertising tends to be either very Victorian (plenty of flowery language because you are old and speak like that anyway) or very Antipodean (state the obvious – and only the obvious - because your audience is stupid). In other words: basic.

This cracked me up! They say ‘nail trimmer’ – it’s more of a ‘claw grinder’.

Just now on TV there was one of those adverts from JML Direct advertising PediPaws - a tool for trimming your pet’s claws. It seems to consist of a grinding wheel on a spinning shaft (it looks a lot like my Dremel multi-tool), and you push your pet’s toes through a small hole and the grinding wheel files their claws down. You can see the video on their site if you click the link above.

PediPaws Claw Grinder/Nail Trimmer

The best bit is where they are showing an owner trimming their cat’s claws. The cat is sitting there all contented, thinking “why is that camera pointed at me?” as the loving owner manipulates the PediPaws unit.

Obviously, there is no sound other than the voiceover – but it must be fairly obvious the device isn’t turned on.

Every cat I have ever owned was telepathic – you just had to think about spraying it with flea powder, or taking it to the vets, or giving it a tablet the vet said it had to have, and it would tear off its outer fur coat and become SuperCat. Not the good SuperCat either, but the evil one – after Lex Luthor had made him hold some dodgy Kryptonite!

When giving my cats tablets I had to wear leather gardening gloves – after the first time I tried it without, and nearly needed a blood transfusion. Ditto when spraying them for fleas.

And I had to use all kinds of tricks to take them to the vet, otherwise I wouldn’t see them for two weeks after they went into hiding.

So I find it hard to imagine that putting a high-speed rotary tool anywhere near any animal – let alone a cat – is going to result in anything other than serious injury to the owner. If the cat is tolerant enough to let you shove its foot into this tool, it sure as hell won’t be when it feels contact being made!

Incidentally, JML Direct (and its partner stores) are selling this thing for £24.99. It costs £4.99 from this online store (Key Fitness).

Anyway, I think this must rate as Stupidest Product Ever – way above the nose hair trimmer (what’s wrong with pulling them out? It’s way more effective). Which made me think: imagine a nose or ear hair trimmer for pets… But I bet the Poodle, Cairn and Yorkshire Terrier, and Jack Russell owners out there will all be queuing in Wilkos tomorrow!

EDIT 24/12/2009: Wow! At the rate this one is getting hits, we could have a new champion post (beating the Man Has Pine Tree Growing In Lung story). I can see a lot of Yorkshire Terriers and other Fidos with a PediPaw in their Christmas stocking tomorrow morning (and yes, people DO put up stockings for their pets).

Further to my recent post about cancelled lessons due to weather, I noticed on one forum someone getting excited and pontificating about how there is a market for specialised snow lessons.

Let’s have a reality check here.

1. Until February 2009, it hadn’t snowed to any appreciable extent in the UK for around 26 years!
2. When it DOES snow a little it is usually gone inside a week or two.

Admittedly, local councils’ incompetence and desire for bureaucracy (and Nottingham councils are no exception here) means that every time there is any bad weather it is like they have never experienced it before. This makes it seem a lot worse than it really is.

So. Will I be ditching my normal pupils and specialising in snow driving? I don’t think so.

Having a specialised Snow Instructor in the UK (particularly in the Midlands or South East) would be like having a fleet of icebreakers sailing around the Mediterranean: bloody stupid!

I’ll carry on doing things the way I am now. Use whatever weather comes to hand as a teaching opportunity if it is appropriate.

Incidentally, I keep seeing search terms like “cancelled driving test 23rd” from people located in the South East (where the snow has been heaviest) in my stats. PHONE YOUR TEST CENTRE TO FIND OUT IF TESTS ARE CANCELLED – YOU WON’T FIND IT ON THE WEB. Even if you did, you have to let the test centre know you were going to turn up, otherwise you may go down as not turning up instead and then have to argue over your money. Don’t take the chance.

And strike 3! My 9.37am test this morning at Colwick MPTC has also been cancelled. That’s all my tests this week.

I was thinking: since the Nottinghamshire County Council and Nottingham City Council have shown their combined incompetence by not gritting so many roads for over a week now, I wonder if there is any avenue for litigation by driving instructors? You know, suing them for lost income?

The roads around both test centres are abysmal – even a week after the bad weather arrived. I have seen gritters out, and I can see exactly what our illustrious councils are up to: they are only gritting large roads – no doubt in an attempt to conserve rock salt supplies so they can’t be accused of running out of that again (remember February this year?)

What makes it worse is that Nottingham has had no more than 1-2cm of snow spread over 3 or 4 light dustings. The problem is hard, compacted, and completely untreated ice.