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The Driving Instructor Examiner
‘OK Mr Harris, I can now give you
feedback on your Advanced Driving Instructor examination. As you
know, I role-played the part of a learner driver who you were
instructing. In doing that, I simulated driver errors that a
novice might make, and I have assessed you on your responses to
my actions.
You started very well. When I climbed into
the boot of the vehicle, you correctly pointed out that I should
ideally be sitting in the front, behind the steering wheel. You
were again correct to highlight that I should not have pulled
away from the kerb without signalling or looking in the rear view
mirror. The pensioner who was knocked from his bicycle as a
result did indeed constitute a road traffic accident, and you
were absolutely right that I should have stopped.
I cannot fault your technical appraisal of
my errors and road traffic offences when I reversed down the slip
road onto the motorway, though I fear that the tone of alarm,
indeed panic, in your voice may have been somewhat disconcerting
for a novice, and possibly damaging to his or her confidence.
You unfortunately failed to comment upon
the fact that I was exceeding the motorway speed limit by some
forty miles an hour while driving along the hard shoulder. I
would perhaps suggest that covering you eyes while reciting the
Lord’s Prayer restricts your ability to focus on the details
of a learner’s performance.
Your attention was much more clearly
focused when I crossed the central reservation, and you made the
very constructive observation that driving at one-hundred-and-ten
miles an hour in the wrong direction along a motorway towards
oncoming traffic was an unsafe practice. Once again, however,
there was room for improvement in your manner and phraseology.
Screaming ‘You’re insane. We’ll all be killed!’
could be taken very badly by more sensitive pupils.
As we drove towards the river, I thought
that you climbing through the passenger window onto the roof was
rather unconventional. I can appreciate, nevertheless, how this
might allow you to observe the skills of your student from a
different vantagepoint. No instructor should ever, however, allow
his or her pupil to drive unsupervised, so leaping from the
vehicle shortly before it plunged from the bridge into the water,
was something of a dereliction of that duty.
I did not have an opportunity to talk to
you after the examination as you were, of course, sedated, and
taken to the psychiatric hospital where we are today. I am
pleased, however, to let you know now that you have passed the
examination. Also I would like to reassure you that your current
bout of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder will not in any way affect
your career as an instructor. In fact, I was diagnosed as
psychotic in this very hospital and yet have continued without
interruption my role as a Driving Instructor Examiner...’
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