Driving Lessons Videos Test Tips and Advice

The Daily Mail newspaper is reporting that the government is making a u-turn on an earlier decision to force driving instructors sitting in on tests as from October 2010.



I can't find anything about this on the dsa website, and the twitter channel has nothing either, so an official announcement is probably in the pipeline.

The Daily Mail is also suggesting that this removal of compulsary observers could also mean a speedup in the introduction of independent driving during the test. we will have to wait for the DSA to make it all official.

In the meantime, the advice I would give learner drivers is to continue working hard on those driving lessons, put in as much private practice as you can, and get the practical assessment out of the way before these changes are made to an already tough driving test.

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I recently had an enquiry from someone asking if I would advice them to take driving lessons with Red in the area where they lived, and the answer I gave to this provisional licence holder is the same that I give to everyone, and I mentioned this in my AA driving lessons post, the quality of tuition you get depends entirely on the instructor, and not the school franchise that they might have bought into, whether it be RED, AA, LDC or BSM.

Now I know that strong brands are supposed to represent quality, but in the case of driving lessons, this is not usually the case because it is impossible for the franchise owner to monitor the activities of all its driving instructors, all they can do is issue guidelines which they hope their franchisees will follow.
One of the advantages of taking tuition with national organisations like RED, is that you can make complaints to a central call centre, and possibily get your driving instructor changed possibily with a goodwill free lesson, but not many learner drivers take the time to do this, they either walk away completely, or if close to a test, will bear with whatever they are not happy with, and try and pass their practical assessment with an ADI they are not satisfied with and the services offered.

So once again, when thinking of booking driving lessons, try and find out as much as possible about the instructor that you will be using, or has been allocated to you, and in particular take note of how your first few sessions go, if you notice things you don't like (taking phone calls, texting pupils, abusive language racial, sexual, etc, shouting at you, etc), then you should consider getting someone else, and he/she is not going to change, that is their personality and they way they conduct their driving school business and RED, the AA or BSM will not be able to change it, nor will you.

You should be able to enjoy your driving lessons, and always look forward to the next one, not dread and have to endure the hour or 2hrs you are in the car, afterall you are paying for a service, and with the current competition in the learner driver training market, there are a lot of good driving instructors out there, both franchised and independent looking for your business, you just need to find them. All the best with your lessons and the test when you get to it.

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The phone number for your local driving test centre is on the appointment letter that the DSA will have sent you shortly after booking your test.



The only time you will need to phone the centre is on the day of your appoitment to check if the driving test is still going ahead if there has been bad weather overnight or during the day before your appointment time. Any other enquires regarding the DSA practical car assessment should be made via the website or the customer services contact telephone number (if you can get through). The dsa examiners are busy conducting tests, and don't have the time to spend on the phone which is why the telephone numbers are not published for general knowledge (how would you like your test cancelled or delayed because an examiner was held up).



If for any reason you don't have an appointment letter and need to contact the dsa centre where your assessment is taking place (late teest booking, postal strike), then you would have to go through customer services or just turn up for the test and hope it goes ahead (not a good idea if you have to travel far (I've had people from Hackney, Clapham take tests in Mill Hill/Hendon). This is one of the reasons why you need to keep you appointment letter with you. By the way you can't phone to let the driving examiner that you are running late, if you are more than 5 minutes late (no matter the reason or excuse), the appointment will not go ahead, and you will lose your test fee.


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Many of my pupils choose to take driving lessons in a manual car because they like the freedom it gives them of chosing either manual or automatic cars once they have overcome the minor detail of passing the DSA practical driving test. However some of them do try to change their minds after they encounter some hurdles while preparing for the practical car assessment.



First of all let me say that yes it is easier to take driving lessons in an automatic car and you would take less time to get to the standard where you will be thinking of taking the test, but it doesn't necessarily follow that it will be easier to pass in an automatic if you learnt to drive in a manual and have either failed the test or found a particular driving test maneuver such as reversing round the corner difficult and are looking for an easier route to getting that pass certificate.

There is more to passing the test than being able to confortably or smoothly change gears, and while you might not have to worry about those in a car with automatic transmission during your lessons, there are things like speed on approach to a junction, how to spot gaps in traffic at a roundabout, making progress on a national speed limit dual carriageway (A1 for example in Mill Hill), while being able to change lanes safely in preparation for a right turn at Stirling corner.
Even during your maneuvers, you can still hit the kerb in an automatic car while doing the turn in the road, not to think of those who can not reverse into the small Hendon test centre car park bays without straddling the line.

The point I'm trying to make is that many of you currently learning to drive will hit a hurdle at one time or the other, and you need to persist and work you way through the difficuties with your ADI, if you think they are not able to help, then maybe it is time to try changing driving instructors. Personally I don't think changing to automatic driving lessons is the right answer in this case (I might be wrong since I don't offer them), but if you are thinking of changing, don't be afraid to go back to manual if it doesn't make a difference to the real problem that you were having.

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