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.