Driving instructor - I give up!

It was the last driving lesson of a very busy day, and it was not starting on a good note, I was running late due to transportation problems. I call my pupil to let her know I'll be running late and if she is still okay to do the lesson. All is okay, so about 25 minutes later, I pick up the pupil.

The pupil is one of those I had to motivate last week, as I felt she wasn't taking her learning very serious, over 20 hours of tuition and not passed theory test yet (3 attempts so far). I was expecting a good drive as we had met last week after a 4 week gap and the driving hadn't been too bad.

I wanted her to practise her bay parking exercises, so we were going to have to go via the A41 and the busy Apex Corner roundabout, not that this should be a problem, since it is her local roundabout, and we use it on almost every lesson. Approaching from the north, I give the instruction 'at the roundabout follow the road ahead, take the second exit'. She approaches in the correct lane, does not put a signal on (correct move), the lights change to green allowing us to proceed, as we go past the first exit (we are in the left hand lane), she indicates right (wrong, we need the exit to our left), I quickly flick the indicator left, there are cars overtaking on the right and this was a misleading signal, and say we are taking the exit on the left as she steers in the right direction. Oh dear! We are just 5 minutes into the lesson and someone is not concentrating.

Continuing on the A41, we approach another roundabout (Mill Hill circus), this time we need to turn right (into Mill Hill Broadway), so I give the instruction 'at the roundabout turn right, take the third exit'. This time she stays in the left lane and indicates left, I point right and give the instruction again, at which point she changes lane without checking her mirrors or indicating, there is no one approaching in the right lane, so I didn't need to intervene! We eventually get to the car park where we do the bay parking exercises without too much problems, a few pointers to make sure she understands the manoeuvre and the procedures to perform it correctly on the driving test, then we go for some more driving and deal with roundabouts and the other exercises required during the driving test.

Towards the end of the driving lesson, I was getting frustrated, as some of the driving mistakes being made where un-expected, and when I mentioned them I was getting this 'I know' response which wasn't even serious! Sometimes I wonder if people take driving lessons just to say I'm learning to drive rather than a real desire to actually take and pass the UK driving test.

Looks like we both were having a bad day, as usually don't allow the actions of a pupil get to me. I was glad when the lesson was over, and I could head home.

By the way I'm not giving up on the pupil or driving instruction!

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