In the last three months I have recruited half a dozen new pupils, all of whom have had lessons with other instructors in Milton Keynes and Bletchley, some of whom have done more than one test previously. So, we get in the car, a few words to establish what they have done and I hand them the keys, we set off, the driving may not be too brilliant but it’s acceptable. Take a right here, a left there, ahead at the roundabout. . . ‘Where are we?’ ‘Newton Longville’ ‘I’ve never been here before.’ Hey, it appears on about three test routes! I explain that we are just doing odd bits of test routes all joined up to recreate something like test conditions. It becomes obvious quite soon that they have never been anywhere. I had one who had never been on the A5. Another had never been out of Bletchley. Central Milton Keynes might as well have been Delhi. I had a young girl recently for Pass Plus and she had ONLY done test routes in Bletchley. She has no idea how she passed a test – me neither. The point I am making is that there is more to driving than learning half a dozen test routes. You guys need to learn about different styles on different routes, roads and conditions. Gain as much experience as possible with an instructor to keep you safe. Any rat can quite soon learn its way through a maze. You will find it hard to cope when you get together a few supplies and want to go on a road trip to Bedford, shopping in Northampton or football in Luton. Swindon has a wonderful roundabout. Coventry has an inner ring road that worries me; even Newport Pagnell has its ‘interesting’ bits. You start driving with an empty bag of experience and a full bag of luck. You need to fill the former before the latter runs out.
Posted on: Thu, 19 Jun 2014 21:48:47 +0000
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