Friday, 9 July 2010

The perils of a country road..

A couple of days ago I had an incident occur whilst out on a lesson and thought it might be of use to learners when thinking about the dangers of driving on out of town roads.
I often take my pupils out onto roads that they won't be tested on during their driving exam - after all, I'm not just teaching people to pass the test but to be able to drive safely under all conditions. Now the pupil I was with has a tendency to overlook forward planning and so we were working on anticipation of hazards. Taking him down a fairly narrow country road I was asking the usual 'what if?' questions: 'What if we meet a large vehicle now?', 'what if there are pedestrians walking on the road?', 'what if somebody pulls out of a driveway without seeing us?'. I think a big problem is that when people first start driving they only see what is directly in front of them and don't think about what could be around the next bend. Something that is key in using when on unfamiliar roads are road signs, especially the triangular warning signs. They can give us vital information as to what is ahead of us such as sharp bends, side roads, crossroads and gradients etc. All of which we should be slowing down for and checking mirrors. Anticipation of oncoming traffic is also key. Is there a wide vehicle going too fast coming around that bend towards us? Pupils must be aware that other drivers can be erratic to and so we must prepare for this.
Anyway, the inevitable happened as I was trying to get my pupil to understand this. A van was coming far too fast around the bend and slightly on our side of the road, pupil panicked and yanked the wheel to the left and we ended up with a damaged tyre. A lesson learned I would hope as had he been prepared for that then maybe he could have dealt with it in a safer way. Until it happens, it is sometimes very difficult for a pupil to envisage that and as a driving instructor it's my job to try and help them do that. Fortunately it is very rare that it ends up with a situation like this!

1 comment:

  1. こんにちは!お元気ですか?
    韓国料理が好きなのですか?
    私はバリにいつか行きたい。

    ReplyDelete