John's Blog Posts

The proposals cover a wide range of road safety measures and are designed to ensure learner drivers are properly prepared before their test, including the chance to gain motorway experience with an approved driving instructor. The proposals include:

• learners allowed to take a motorway driving lesson with an approved driving instructor in a dual controlled car – this is designed to make drivers safer once they have passed their test
• a £2 million in-depth research programme will be launched to identify the best possible driver education, training and behaviour-change interventions for learner and novice drivers

The Department for Transport (DfT) has launched a new consultation document, entitled Motoring Services Strategy: a Strategic Direction 2016 to 2020.

The document concentrates on the possibilities of changes to the ways that the three motoring agencies, the DVLA, DVSA and VCA, work individually today and, perhaps, could work together in the future. The document was published before the 2015 Spending Review so does not include a formal impact assessment. DfT intends to publish a new motoring services strategy in Spring with an impact assessment.

The consultation asks a number of questions under five headings Digital; Efficiency; Agency Transformation and Deregulation. There are half a dozen questions directly related to road safety and others that are relevant to driver trainers.

It seems a little strange for DfT to release a consultation about driver testing when examiners are taking strike action and working to rule, while L-test waiting times at some test centres are stretching out towards next Easter.

The MSA is lobbying the DVSA, the DfT, the Government minister responsible for driving tests and the shadow minister for transport over this issue: we have also made contact with MPs from all parties.

The MSA has made clear that the situation regarding test waiting times is totally unacceptable, as are the differential waiting times around the country, and that this is having a huge effect on the ability of driver trainers to prepare pupils for the test.

Worrying news reaches me that all is not well among the ranks of driving examiners. As we know, waiting times are increasing all over the country and many examiners are retiring when they could stay on a little longer simply, some say, because morale within their numbers is very low; a number are reported to feel that the DVSA is no longer a happy place to be.

Much of the discontent appears to be connected to the Modernising Employment Contracts (MEC), a cross government initiative designed to standardise the hours worked by all civil servants. It has been suggested to me that this was never a great deal in the first place and that most people who voted for it did so on the basis that the alternative was no pay increases, forever!

There are many complex and varied reasons why individuals vote for a particular political party. It might be upbringing, it could be personal conviction or a vague liking for a particular policy.

Generally speaking, I have found over the years that most driver trainers tend to lean towards the right of the political spectrum. This is possibly driven (sorry) in many cases by the principle that as self-employed business people, their best interests are served by a right of centre party.

If the DVSA want more professional ADIs, they need to give us the log books, allow us on motorways, ensure everyone does CPD.

I was recently told by an examiner about a test candidate who, at the end of their test, was asked to complete a reverse bay park in the test centre car park. The candidates’ reaction to the request was odd as he looked taken aback. In practice he could not complete the manoeuvre and failed the test for that alone.

The MSA has called for action to end a ‘postcode lottery’ over driving test waiting times as the DVSA struggles to cope with increased demand for L-tests.

As ADIs – and their pupils – are finding out, waiting times for tests, which have been at or around the DVSA target figure of six weeks since the start of the recession in 2008, have been creeping up inexorably around Great Britain in recent months. Many ADIs are grumbling that their local DTC is now struggling to offer driving tests within 10 weeks, in some parts of the country the situation is far worse.