Documents

Date: August 2008
Test Centre: Wallasey
Reason for fail: N/A

My previous post reminded me of something that happened a couple of years back.

I turned up at my pupil's house on test day to find him tearing his hair out. James had all his stuff together a few days earlier, then come the day itself, his license was just nowhere to be found. I spent about 45 minutes with James, trying to help him look.

James had a toddler son, and thought the license might have been picked up by tiny fingers. We looked in all the obvious places, and all sorts of obscure ones too. We looked in the fridge. In the washing machine. In the bins. Down the back of the sofa.

But eventually we had to admit defeat. I went home and James failed to turn up for his test. I didn't have the heart to charge him for my time. He did lose his test fee though.

At the test centre, an examiner would have walked out into the waiting room, called James' name out, got no response, waited for the mandatory five minutes, then gone back into the office and put the kettle on.

The license never was found. James had to apply for a replacement, and had to pay to rebook his test. Fortunately, he passed on that next attempt.

A chain of circumstances

Date: October 2012.
Test Centre: Wallasey
Reason for fail: Reverse Park (road) - Control

Sharon failed her test yesterday. I was sititng in on the test, and watched as the examiner allowed her a generous amount of time to get the car close to and parallel with the kerb, but eventually, after repeatedly failing to get within about 4 or 5 feet of the kerb, he asked her to drive on.

Sharon also got another serious fault right at the end of the test for lack of observation at a junction, but I'd like to focus on the reversing exercise for this post.

The story here goes back to before the test even began. I'd just washed my car prior to picking her up for her pre-test lesson when I got a message from Sharon asking what documentation she needed to bring along with her. Since I was only a couple of minutes away, I didn't answer. I just went to pick her up. She and her boyfriend were in a state of turmoil. They'd turned their house upside down, but could not find the paper counterpart to her license. They thought it was at her Mum's house, and her Mum was busy looking for it and would call if she found it.

When you present yourself for a driving test (or your theory test for that matter), you MUST bring both parts of your driving license. The photocard and the paper counterpart. If you're one of those rare birds that has an old style license without a photocard, you MUST provide photographic evidence of your identity, such as a passport. Without this your test will not go ahead.

Driving tests can be nerve racking things. It pays to make sure you have all your documentation available well before your instructor knocks on your door. The last thing you need is to be frantically scrabbling around for your documents at the last minute.

Anyway, Sharon was pretty sure it was at her Mum's and we went out on the pre test lesson. Sharon was actually driving quite well, all things considered.

Twenty minutes in, her phone rang. We parked up and she answered it. It was her Mum. The license had been found, but we'd have to go and get it. She couldn't come to us. And so off we went from New Brighton to Moreton. And then back to Wallasey test centre. To get from Wallasey to Moreton takes only about 15 minutes. To get there and back takes around half an hour.

So that was the pre test lesson. Normally, I'd have given the reversing exercises a quick once over and if there was a problem, we'd do a bit of work on it to try to sort things out, but this time, there just wasn't time.

What caused her to fail was as much as anything, a lack of organisation.

How to turn a drama into a crisis!

Date of Test: August 2012
Test Centre: Upton
Reason for fail: Turn in Road, Observation; Move off, Safely.

Carrie Ann was nervous. She always is when what she's doing is put under scrutiny. She's never liked tests of any kind, and the Driving test was something she'd been dreading.

Still despite her fear, she was prepared to have a go, and so it was that in August 2012, she presented herself at Upton driving test centre for her second attempt.

Generally, she coped well with the drive but two things happened that caused her to fail.

Firstly, she did the reversing component of the turn in the road by looking out of her front windscreen instead of looking where she was going. This meant she was far more likely to bump into the kerb, but more importantly, if anything had been behind her, like a pedestrian or cyclist, she would not have seen them. She picked up a serious fault for observation.

I was sat in the back for this one, and I could see the examiner's test sheet. He didn't actually mark the fault until the end of the test, so I hoped he might just mark it as a minor fault. Perhaps if the second thing hadn't happened, he would have.

The second thing was a right turn at the end of a one way street in Irby.

Carrie Ann was unsure of herself here. Moving to the right hand side of the road often feels wrong even though it's the correct thing to do if you're turning right. But, slightly hesitantly, she got herself in the right place. The junction offers good visibility to the left, but it's not quite as open from the right.

Carrie Ann moved forward far enough to get a clear view to the right. The road was clear to her left, but there was a bus approaching from the right. This bus was a fair distance away, and there was a gap for her to get into. She attempted to move away, but had forgotten to change into gear one. As she brought her clutch up, the car stalled.

Carrie Ann panicked and pressed her brake pedal. This caused her to stop in the middle of the road, and forced the bus to have to stop. Eventually, she got the car running, put the car into gear one, made sure it was safe to move off, and off she went.

Most people have a misconception. That misconception is that you move away by bringing your clutch up. But what you should really do is get your footwork sorted before you move away. Us instructors call it setting your gas and finding your bite. Pressing the accellerator provides the engine with the power it needs to move a ton of metal from a standing start. The clutch controls that power. So when you move away, you do it by keeping your feet still. Releasing the handbrake will make the car move smoothly forward, even if you're in second gear.

But everyone stalls from time to time. If you want to really cause a problem to other people with your stall, you should slam on your brakes as well.

Alternatively, what you can do is put your clutch down and start your engine. If you stalled because you brought your clutch up, make sure it's still safe to go, and just move away without bringing your clutch up. If you stalled because you were in the wrong gear, put the car into the right gear, make sure it's still safe to go, and move away withough bringing your clutch up.