Category: John’s View

I was recently asked a couple of questions about Driving licence codes:

1. How does a full Category B licence holder go about removing the “01” restriction from their driving licence?
2. Where can I find a schedule of the codes within regulations. I can find plenty of copies of the codes on government and other websites, but not within the schedule to a regulation. Do you know if they are not set out in regulation?

Driving instructors are asked for information and guidance about all aspects of learning to drive and road safety, but how much advice should they give?

The first question most learners ask is “When will I be ready for test?”. Instructors are often somewhat guarded in answering this question, many turning to the joint TSO and DVSA web page www.safedrivingforlife.info, which advises: “Check out our infographic – a pdf file that opens in a new window.” This states that, “on average you need 40 hours of tuition with a professional driving instructor and 20 hours of private practice before passing your driving test.”

As the end of the year approaches my thoughts turn to what next year might bring. However, I won’t be making a lot of predictions after the abject failure of my forecasts over recent times.

It started in May 2015 when I confidently predicted that there would be a hung parliament … clearly, I was wrong and David Cameron’s Conservatives won an, albeit small, majority and he formed a new Government.

Moving on to this year and in June the long-awaited EU Referendum took place. I felt sure that the people of the UK would vote to stay in the EU despite its many obvious faults. I had always believed the view of Winston Churchill “to jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war”, would prevail, and we would continue in membership, to ensure peace and seek to find political solutions to our disagreements with our fellow Europeans. Not to be: a majority of those voting decided we should leave.

Writing the post Now, just reverse out on to the main road for me… about my own driving test experience reminded me that everybody remembers something that happened on their driving test.

Many of these stories become embellished over time and to the ears of many a professional driver trainer or driving test examiner they are clearly a bit tedious and

In the September issue of Newslink (the MSA GB members’ monthly magazine) Tony Phillips, MSA GB Greater London, discussed in his column the driving test trial. One section stated: ‘Upon entering a side road which is a two-way road but is heavily parked on both sides with no immediate passing places, you see a removal van stopped in the middle of the road and just about to commence loading. What would you do?’ He was suggesting that the best course of action would be to do a manoeuvre you wouldn’t usually recommend, mainly reversing out of a side road on to a busy main road. Otherwise, you could be sat there all day!

In my mind’s eye I was immediately transported back to Arkley Road in Herne Bay, Kent on a pleasant spring day – the day I took my own driving test. I had just turned left off King’s Road, down Stanley Road, and as I passed King’s Road School, where I had been a pupil, I was asked to turn left into Arkley Road.

At a recent meeting I attended I was surprised to hear one of the speaker’s state that driver testing was flawed because the new drivers who pass the driving test in the shortest time, have the fewest lessons, incur the fewest driving faults on test, have the highest pass rate are the group of drivers who are involved in the most collisions?  The speaker also suggested that the driving test would be much better if it was competence-based rather than fault-based, and they were not too impressed with the current driving test trial, either.

The number of complaints against driver trainers regarding incidents of a sexual nature with pupils have increased in recent times.

Some of this increase has been attributed by some commentators as down to the “Saville effect”, whereby there is a general increased awareness of abuse and a greater willingness to come forward and report it.

The official Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse has also proved a catalyst for many to report incidents to the police, both recent and historic.

All the ADI representative bodies and the DVSA take these complaints very seriously and act quickly if cases demand it.