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Lively start to the year

January-2015-calendarJanuary was a busy month for the MSA, and all my good intentions to blog on a regular basis have fallen by the wayside. When ‘John’s blog’ was launched I said that, “The idea of my writing a blog is to fill in any gaps in the information output from the MSA. It will give me the opportunity to tell people what I’m up to on behalf of MSA and EFA.”

I’ll try and fill in some of the gaps here. The month got off to a great start when all the work put in by the MSA management team, to negotiate an alliance with diP, came to fruition. We all hope this is going to be of real benefit to MSA members, providing up-to-date and cost-effective training. 

Then came the launch of the new-look MSA website – and its subsequent hacking.

Next up was an MSA board meeting that covered a variety of subjects, including this year’s MSA National Conference, the possibility of relocating the MSA head office – unlikely at the moment – and, of course, the website and the then upcoming meeting between NASP and DVSA.

I attended one of the driving test trial meetings at Chadderton, Manchester, which was very interesting. I think it is important that this kind of research takes place and that change is considered. While all the changes suggested by the trial might not turn out to be successful, it is clearly important that change is instigated.

At the moment we know that distractions such as sat navs cause new drivers problems, and that many are not equipped to perform manoeuvres that they are regularly asked to carry out, such as reversing out of a parking bay.

That’s why it is important to consider change otherwise, as Henry Ford put it, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” In our case, that would mean new drivers who are not equipped for the modern road environment.

The NASP meeting with the DVSA was very helpful and a full report is here, There are also some new statistics from the Standards Check.

The month concluded for me with a special EFA meeting in Frankfurt concerning standards for driving schools. The meeting was, at times, quite boisterous, with almost every European country currently having driving school standards that differ from every other European country. Trying to evolve a standard that was acceptable to all was not easy but with compromise on all sides I think we got there in the end.

MSA will publish a report of the standard when it has been signed off by EFA members.

All in all, a rather busy period. So if I have not replied to an email or phone call I apologise; I will try to catch up in the next couple of weeks.

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