Long Term Learners

That’s it, summer holidays over for another year. It’s back to coping with the “school run,” dark mornings/evenings and deteriorating weather. Important for new drivers to experience these conditions but can be frustrating for driving instructors as we struggle to get from one pupil to the next.

This summer was good news for one test candidate though. I read in the August newspapers about a test candidate, Suzi Hughes, who finally passed her driving test after 22 years and 21 attempts! She had to retake her theory test several times as it kept expiring every two years. She also tried three different test centres and got through twelve instructors. Congratulations to her and well done for sheer perseverance.

Suzi is not the only one who struggles with the driving test. In fact 48 tests is the current record. This unenviable number of driving tests belongs to a Mrs Git Kaur Randhawa of Hayes, Middlesex.

The closest I got to a long-term test candidate was over a four-year period when I had a pupil pass in Isleworth after 11 attempts and 11 years. Just four tests and four years with me though. She had tried manual and automatic. She had tried BSM and the AA all to no avail and finally came to me from a work colleague of hers who had passed with me earlier. Most of her problems related to spatial awareness during the manoeuvres, planning ahead and meeting situations.

On the day of her 11th test the sun was shining, all road works in the area had vanished and the examiner’s name sounded like “Be Good.” It was her day and when the examiner said she had passed, she went mental, jumping up and down in Isleworth test centre car park in sheer ecstasy. I wished her well and finally, or so I thought, we parted company. I assumed that was the end but . . . 6 months later I got a phone call from her “Pheel, I can’t park!” She is Spanish and that is my interpretation of how she pronounced my name Phil.

To celebrate her test success, her husband had gone out and bought a people carrier and basically she couldn’t cope, so it was back to having a few more lessons – well fifty actually!! Apart from parking practise we would cover journeys she was going to have to make. For example taking her children to dancing classes or to and from their friend’s houses.

The most amusing story was once she started to drive on her own. When she came home she would always park on the driveway forwards because she didn’t have the confidence to reverse. She would then reverse into the road on her next journey. Because she never looked properly and her sight was obscured by a hedge, she either didn’t see or consider pedestrians on the pavement. So her husband got an electric saw and cut the hedge down. He said “You may not look for them, but at least they can see you!!”