Two’s Company Three’s A Crowd.
The D.S.A. are proposing that in the learner driver’s test the pupil will not only have an examiner in the car but also a third person (instructor, parent or friend) in the back of the car for extra weight. So how can this be practiced easily? If you’ve got your own car and enough passengers to take out on a regular basis it’s no problem. In a driving lesson, this may be more difficult if you’re taking lessons in your lunch break, free period evening or weekend as your instructor will have to arrange to have someone else in the car. The third person could be a friend but this may be off-putting for the pupil and also tiresome for the passenger (will they want to come again on the next lesson). One alternative is that the instructor arranges to pick you up with their last pupil still in the car and you drive them home. This is known as piggy backing. The D.S.A. has frowned upon this as it doesn’t allow the instructor to debrief and close the lesson correctly. It can also put extra pressure on a novice driver if they have to drive through areas that may be beyond their level of ability, or demoralising when watching a natural driver picking up new skills more quickly when they may have spent several weeks working on the same subject!
The idea behind this proposal is to reduce the amount of novice drivers passing their test one week (with only one passenger) and then a week later filling the car with four passengers and trying to drive the same way. As we all know the handling qualities of a car change dramatically once it is loaded.
Other options could be:
- newly qualified drivers drive for a short period displaying P plates limited to carrying two passengers at any one time.
- Or make Pass Plus compulsory before a newly qualified driver can carry passengers and when doing Pass Plus there must be at least three people in the car.
Let us know your thoughts on the subject!
