Proposed New Driving Test

Passing first time doesn't mean anything. I passed on my third time yet I drive better than those that passed on their first go.

They really need to look at teaching people how to drive properly. People drive with no awareness what so ever these days. And don't get me started on lane discipline...
 
Passed first time with 52 hours of lessons which was just above average when I looked around. Certainly better to have more lessons than somehow get away with less. Just passing the test is only a very small part of driving and being good at anticipation and reading the road cannot be learned with 15 lessons but certainly improves with more and more. My instructor had been doing it for 30 years when I took my test and was easy going about when I took the test, but wanted me to feel confident.

Guess that can vary between people a lot but I see so many bad drivers on the road I wish there was a mandatory minimum of say 40 hours!
 
I passed when I was 17. I had just 3 lessons and one of those was the "pre-test"

Yes I drove like an utter cyclepath for a fair while afterwards.

In fact, I got banned twice under the old "endorsements" scheme. Totting up

ie: Speeding (no surprise)
Bald tyre
No insurance <- technicality but I still got done

That 3 got me banned for 3 months and then another brain-fart speeding which gave me a 2 month ban.

I then went back to Australia on my own and because I was banned here I retook my test all over again there.

The Instructor was supposed to give me four lessons but the GIT turned up at test time !! ( I still passed !!)

You take your test at any cop-shop in WA (In those days) and there is no waiting time !

If you passed then you paid, if you failed then you didn't !

Completely different out there now though. iinm it's a 3 year 3 stage probation period.
 
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hhm. The deposit and refund system sounds like a good and fair idea to me. Though it probably won't change pass rates by a significant degree. You can take penalty kicks all day long but when your 2-1 down at 90 minutes..
 
Shoza said:
Passed first time with 52 hours of lessons which was just above average when I looked around. Certainly better to have more lessons than somehow get away with less. Just passing the test is only a very small part of driving and being good at anticipation and reading the road cannot be learned with 15 lessons but certainly improves with more and more. My instructor had been doing it for 30 years when I took my test and was easy going about when I took the test, but wanted me to feel confident.

Guess that can vary between people a lot but I see so many bad drivers on the road I wish there was a mandatory minimum of say 40 hours!
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52 hours! Really?? At a couple of lessons a week thats 6 months! At the amount I paid that would have been well over a grand in lessons!

How bad a driver are you, or how bad was your instructor that it took you that long?

If you mandated 40 hours, whos paying for the 31 hours I didn't need? £700 I'd have to find?
 
Why do u keep thinking people must be crap drivers if they have lots of lessons? I chose to have 40 spread over around 5 months as I wanted to drive in icy conditions, heavy rain and at night which takes some getting used to especially in bad weather.
I have always had good handling of a car. I never struggled with any manoeuvres like parking or or reversing round a corner etc something I know people "especially women" struggle with even after passing Judging by the crap I see in car parks.
I could have passed my test after 20 lessons but I lacked road awareness which to me only comes in time over a decent amount of lessons from encountering different situations.
To me bad drivers are more dangerous if they cannot control a car properly which is most women because they have the seat 2 inches from the steering wheel :D.
 
Why does everyone assume your a crap driver if you didn't have lots of lessons too?

Why did you have to wait to experience lots of situations before taking your test? Do you not continue to experience new situations every time you drive, especially on a road you haven't driven before? Icy conditions, so everyone has to wait for winter? Are you suggesting mandated weather as well as a minimum number of lessons? Nobody can take a test until they have done 40 hours and driven in snow. Mild winter, sorry your going to have to wait 12 months.

Assuming someone needs a minimum number of hours to be a good driver is silly, but if you genuinely need 40+ hours to reach a level compitent enough to pass a test, as opposed to just choosing to spend the money to get more experience, then I think it's perfectly sensible to say you are a slower learner and less naturally compitent driver than someone who took 10 lessons to get to the same level. Forcing the 10 lesson guy to spend time and money on another 3x as much achieves nothing beyond annoying those forced to do it unnessasarily.
 
I did zero road driving with my parents as they said they were not qualified to not teach me bad habits (which was fair enough, my dad was a terror driver when he was younger, and my mum lacks confidence). I'd driven a few cars in fields and on private land and had a full understanding of how a car worked. But it wasn't much.

I don't need hours of practice whenever I get in a new car, nor does anyone else. I can hire a pretty large van and they just give you the keys and off you go, no hours of training required.

I'm not saying everyone is the same. Some people need more time that's fine. What I'm saying is forcing me to take 40 hours of lessons will have done nothing but annoy me and make me many many hundreds of pounds poorer.

I did do Pass Plus after my test, where it did actually snow at one point. I did it for the insurance benefits (not that there were any) but did question why those skills were optional and not mandatory? The fact that at no point do you have to know how a motorway works before getting a license that allows you to drive on one seems bizzare given the risks involved. I genuinely had a friend (with a license) who thought the 3 lanes on a motorway were for 3 speeds, 60mph, 70mph and 80mph, and that you had to be in the correct lane for how fast you were driving.
 
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Skeeter said:
I don't need hours of practice whenever I get in a new car, nor does anyone else. I can hire a pretty large van and they just give you the keys and off you go, no hours of training required.
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That's because most cars and vans have very similar controls, and the rules of the road are mostly the same. It's not the same as going from no experience at all to learning to do something totally foreign, I have a friend who's been learning to drive for months and still hasn't managed decent clutch control.

Skeeter said:
I did do Pass Plus after my test, where it did actually snow at one point. I did it for the insurance benefits (not that there were any) but did question why those skills were optional and not mandatory? The fact that at no point do you have to know how a motorway works before getting a license that allows you to drive on one seems bizzare given the risks involved. I genuinely had a friend (with a license) who thought the 3 lanes on a motorway were for 3 speeds, 60mph, 70mph and 80mph, and that you had to be in the correct lane for how fast you were driving.
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How many hours had they taken to pass? Sounds like they could have done with a few more :p

I suppose it depends where you live whether it's feasible to do more advanced driving in normal lessons, but I'd been taken on roads similar to motorways as part of my normal lessons as there are quite a few dual carriageways with on and off ramps around the area I learned. When I did my pass plus I didn't really have anything new to learn, so it was just a nice drive around for a day to get some insurance savings.
 
She failed about 4 times, had 2 years of lessons. She changed instructor and passed shortly after. I wouldn't be surprised if she had 100+ hours by the time she passed.

I'm pretty certain the instructor was deliberately crap to just keep the money coming in. My instructor was the most expensive around, but I passed after 9 hours. Both my sisters passed first time with about the same amount of lessons using him too. My driving instructor taught Jenson Button how to drive :) (he failed his first test for speeding, lol).
 
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Skeeter said:
52 hours! Really?? At a couple of lessons a week thats 6 months! At the amount I paid that would have been well over a grand in lessons!

How bad a driver are you, or how bad was your instructor that it took you that long?

If you mandated 40 hours, whos paying for the 31 hours I didn't need? £700 I'd have to find?
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1 hour lesson a week so took a while. Didn't struggle with any manoeuvres at all and passed first time. I drive well now am significantly better at road awareness / predication compared to most people on the road and my instructor was very very well recommended and reviewed.
 
I dont personally think the number of lessons you have has any contributions to your ability as a driver - mainly because each time you step into a car and go for a drive you are guaranteed to come across a new scenario from which you can learn something from.

Labelling yourself as an excellent driver for requiring fewer lessons is moronic - experience has a huge part to play - and labelling those who took many lessons as bad is equally moronic.

This cashback incentive is to me, a good idea - it may encourage people to seek more experience in driving before they take their test, which I can only see being beneficial.
 
If they're going to make changes, they need to make changes to how pupils can complain and get a resolution on unfit examiners.

On my first test my examiner had already decided I was failing before I started the car, she was marking the sheet in areas where I would have had to have been on the move.

It was a right ballache to get sorted with DVSA. She'd also turned up 10 mins late (I was her only test that day) and cut it short & didn't debrief.

She told them I caused a white van to dangerously deviate. Said van driver was his mobile and had not see me slowing (normally) for traffic ahead.

Thankfully after much toing and froing DVSA decided that her being late & lack of debrief was enough to side with me & I got a free re-test.
 
Skeeter said:
So what would you suggests? Forcing me to take lessons I don't need? Are you going to pay for them for me too?

Any why does learning/training stop when you pass your test? I've continued to learn and improve every time I drive.

You've assumed I'm a dangerous driver because I only had 9 hours of lessons, but surely logic says requiring less training to reach the same standard level of competence as someone who took 50 hours to pass their test means I'm a better driver, and able to learn quicker?

Personally I put it down to a decent driving instructor anyway. If I had gone with someone crap I'd have probably spent 20 hours in lessons and not known what I was doing. As it stands I had 9 quality hours and passed first time.
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Thanks for clearly misunderstanding my post.
 
A lot of the time, for me anyway, failing first time was purely nerves - something nothing can prepare you for. My instructor said I was more than ready, but nerves got to me and speaking to other people, they suffered from that as well rather than lack of preparedness.

So basically it's going to be more expensive for most people as they'll still fail regardless of how ready they are and won't get the deposit back. The deposit will probably bump the price higher than the current test price.

It's just another way of charging more while seeming like they're the good guys reducing the actual price :rolleyes:

I'm just glad I have the licences I want - they seem to be getting more and more expensive and more of a pain almost every year!
 
It's virtually impossible to prepare people for all situations on the road! No matter how many hours you do. I've learned in south London, super busy and narrow road, did the very much hated crash course which totalled 36 hours over two weeks. I'd say after 20 hours I was just driving around polishing my parking skills and dealing with different situations. IMO as long as you're able to safely deal with what ever comes up on the road, you're a safe driver. You can't teach responsibility and once people are left alone they will act differently, no matter how many hours they've spent with an Instructor!
 
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