Learning to drive

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Learning to drive

Garree001

Ohhh my, yes.
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I was out and about today in Woking, right in the middle of the evening rush hour. There was an obviously very new learner driver being taken on all the main A-roads and oh.....my.....god.

I am not sure who should have been stopped from driving there and then first - the learner (who should have been off down some side road on a Sunday morning), or the kn0b for an instructor:

  • The speed of the car was changing erratically - at one point doing 40 odd mph in a 30 zone, and then 25ish in a 50mph stretch.
  • The positioning on the road was simply terrible - from virtually mounting the pavement to almost on the wrong side of the road.
  • They were swerving quite a lot.
  • At one point going around a roundabout, the driver clipped the kirb.
  • And to then top it off, they skidded to a stop inches from hitting a stationary car.
F*** knows what the instructor was doing at the time. Or maybe I don't wanna know lol.

So this, like so many things, got me thinking. Anyone else seen such obviously poor teaching/learning? Also, do you have any stories from your days as a learner?
 
nearly gone into the back of a learner once. wasnt too close to him/her but all of a sudden tthey slammed on the brakes at a set of lights as they were chaning to amber. they were about 10ft away too so god knows why they didnt keep going. from then on i give learners much more space then probably any other driver on the road:) just to be sure
 
what a crap thread. lol maybe the instructor was a bit silly but we all have been there at some point. I learned to drive myself and in my car (only had 5 real lessons a couple of weeks before my test) and i have to admit i drove around car parks and industrial estates for ages. the second i came to rush hour traffic i was bricking it and all over the place for a bit.
 
With 22 years as an ADI I feel I might have something to offer here. But then again maybe not, as it never fails to amaze me when I see this sort of thing. Of course it could be that the pupil has done 30 hours of residential streets and industrial estates and this is his or her first time on busy roads. It could be that there are a lot of partial bowel movements going on in that car.

What you are unlikely to find out, is if that was the pupil's first time out in traffic; or one of his first times out in a car. I've certainly had pupils who've told me an Instructor took them on main roads and through complex junctions on a second or even first driving lesson which, to be frank, almost defies logic.

I've always firmly believed that a learner's progress is closely linked to his or her level of confidence and putting a novice through that sort of stress is something akin to a case of kill or cure. In my experience it usually kills.
 
nearly gone into the back of a learner once. wasnt too close to him/her but all of a sudden tthey slammed on the brakes at a set of lights as they were chaning to amber. they were about 10ft away too so god knows why they didnt keep going.

Probably because officially you're supposed to stop/ prepare to stop when the amber light shows ;)


175. Junctions controlled by traffic lights
You MUST stop behind the white 'Stop' line across your side of the road unless the light is green. If the amber light appears you may go on only if you have already crossed the stop line or are so close to it that to stop might cause an accident.


http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/TravelAndTransport/Highwaycode/DG_070332
 
what a crap thread. lol maybe the instructor was a bit silly but we all have been there at some point. I learned to drive myself and in my car (only had 5 real lessons a couple of weeks before my test) and i have to admit i drove around car parks and industrial estates for ages. the second i came to rush hour traffic i was bricking it and all over the place for a bit.

My point was that they should not have been on that road, at that time and the instructor clearly had no control over the learner or the vehicle. As The Beard said, putting a new or unconfident learner through that kind of thing almost defies logic. I would have said that they were a very new learner, purely by the fact that so many errors and dangerous mistakes were being made at the time.

I was a learner once too and I know that feeling of going out on the main roads for the very first time. I did it in my second lesson - mainly because like you I had had opportunities to learn before my actual lessons. But I only did it when I was able to control the vehicle, maintain a constant and safe speed within the limits and not go running into the side of key roundabouts! I was also not taken onto an arterial road for a major town at rush hour until I was able to be there without being a danger to myself or others...

And what's more, if the instructor had no control of the situation, what the hell were they doing teaching people to drive in the first place?
 
I agree on the "we were all there at one point" however some of us, as described in the OP were not that bad.
The instructor should have taken the learner to somewhere quieter for him/her to gain more confident of the roads. Hell, I was all over the place on my PassPlus a few weeks ago as it was my first time in pitch black and raining at the same time.
My first lesson involved me driving around an industrial estate whilst my instructor filled in paper work, going around mini round abouts etc. Just to get a feel of the car.

Never know, I might have been his/her test you witnessed :LOL:
 
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