John's Blog Posts

In the September issue of Newslink (the MSA GB members’ monthly magazine) Tony Phillips, MSA GB Greater London, discussed in his column the driving test trial. One section stated: ‘Upon entering a side road which is a two-way road but is heavily parked on both sides with no immediate passing places, you see a removal van stopped in the middle of the road and just about to commence loading. What would you do?’ He was suggesting that the best course of action would be to do a manoeuvre you wouldn’t usually recommend, mainly reversing out of a side road on to a busy main road. Otherwise, you could be sat there all day!

In my mind’s eye I was immediately transported back to Arkley Road in Herne Bay, Kent on a pleasant spring day – the day I took my own driving test. I had just turned left off King’s Road, down Stanley Road, and as I passed King’s Road School, where I had been a pupil, I was asked to turn left into Arkley Road.

At a recent meeting I attended I was surprised to hear one of the speaker’s state that driver testing was flawed because the new drivers who pass the driving test in the shortest time, have the fewest lessons, incur the fewest driving faults on test, have the highest pass rate are the group of drivers who are involved in the most collisions?  The speaker also suggested that the driving test would be much better if it was competence-based rather than fault-based, and they were not too impressed with the current driving test trial, either.

The number of complaints against driver trainers regarding incidents of a sexual nature with pupils have increased in recent times.

Some of this increase has been attributed by some commentators as down to the “Saville effect”, whereby there is a general increased awareness of abuse and a greater willingness to come forward and report it.

The official Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse has also proved a catalyst for many to report incidents to the police, both recent and historic.

All the ADI representative bodies and the DVSA take these complaints very seriously and act quickly if cases demand it.

As the dust settles on the UK’s decision to leave the EU, many are asking what effect this will have on driver training and testing in the UK and on road safety matters in general.

The simple answer is probably nothing this week, next week or even next month, but fairly soon there will have to be discussions about how we move forwards on a whole variety of issues.

Exactly how we will set about disentangling UK law from EU Regulations; Directives; Decisions; Recommendations and Opinions will probably keep an army of lawyers and civil servants busy for years. Here are my thoughts on some of the challenges ahead.

Recently I was posed a question by a member who asked about a pupil who currently had six penalty points on their driving licence and was due to take a test.

He had been practising with a friend a couple of weeks prior to his test and they had fallen out (it happens when learning to drive!) argued and the friend tried getting out of the car while they were travelling at high speed on a dual carriageway.

Following the recent MSA conference at Wakefield Suzuki offered me the opportunity to test drive their Celerio model and my first impressions were very favourable. The Celerio is a cracking little car, the build quality is good, and the value for money excellent.

At the recent MSAGB National Conference and Training Day the question was raised – again – about the legality, validity and safety of the new exercise being tried out as part of the current driving test trial.

In December I wrote about the British government launching a Road safety statement: working together to build a safer road system the proposals cover a wide range of road safety measures including learners being allowed to take a motorway driving lesson with an approved driving instructor in a dual controlled car. You may have noticed that I was not particularly enthusiastic about this proposal and I have received some comments about this from people puzzled as to why I was not applauding this triumph from the rooftops. After all, it is something that I have been involved in championing for many years.