Driving test question - complaint?

[vaud]

Fermit said:

An ex retail colleague (30 yrs ago mind) lived there. A nice village, although recall it being quite near Grantham? Mind, I get lost driving off our own driveway, so my geography is hardly reliable!

Grantham is the closest, but once you factor in traffic it's infinitely preferable to go to Newark and Waitrose.

[dundarach]

It's a real bugger to fail, however don't waste time worrying or complaining.

Just book another and move on, nothing good will come from anything else.

[tim jb]

pocketspring said:

Absolute nonsense.

There have been DSA examiners exposing the pass / fail quota practice. I was a victim of it myself.

[CoolHands]

I thought you could overtake slow things by crossing the solid white line

[LosingGrip]

skwdenyer said:

If they wanted an "easy" test centre, they should go to Kendal - the highest pass rate (IIRC 65% or so) in the country

Changing test centres at this stage is about their confidence in the system, not about finding an "easier" one (all the local centres have pretty similar pass/fail stats per the DVSA).

Having a parent sit in on the next test might be a good call - again, for the sense of potential fairness more than anything else. Going into any test feeling like the system is stacked against you (rightly or wrongly) is not a path to success.

Would the parent be unbiased? Do they understand the critiea for passing?

Personally I'd ask the instructor to come along. They are the experts after all rather than a parent.

FWIW - I personally think the learner has got the location wrong when they have tried to recall it.

[Caddyshack]

CoolHands said:

I thought you could overtake slow things by crossing the solid white line

Very good point and could also be the reason for the fail.

You can overtake a pedal cycle, horse or road maintenance vehicle as long as it is not exceeding 10 mph. It would be hard for an examiner to know the exact speed of the bike too.

[119]

Caddyshack said:

CoolHands said:

I thought you could overtake slow things by crossing the solid white line

Very good point and could also be the reason for the fail.

You can overtake a pedal cycle, horse or road maintenance vehicle as long as it is not exceeding 10 mph. It would be hard for an examiner to know the exact speed of the bike too.

If the driver was keeping up, the car speedo would be a good indication.

[ScoobyChris]

Caddyshack said:

Very good point and could also be the reason for the fail.

You can overtake a pedal cycle, horse or road maintenance vehicle as long as it is not exceeding 10 mph. It would be hard for an examiner to know the exact speed of the bike too.

This is something that is great to throw into a commentary as it demonstrates knowledge of the HC and also justifies your decision to overtake/not overtake.

Chris

[Hungrymc]

119 said:

If the driver was keeping up, the car speedo would be a good indication.

In these days of e-bikes and cyclists who are pushing on a little for exercise, I'm finding it quite rare to find a bike on a rural road traveling slower than 10mph.

Same for construction and farm vehicles etc, a lot are doing high teens and therefore are not a legal overtake if crossing a white line.

[Caddyshack]

119 said:

Caddyshack said:

CoolHands said:

I thought you could overtake slow things by crossing the solid white line

Very good point and could also be the reason for the fail.

You can overtake a pedal cycle, horse or road maintenance vehicle as long as it is not exceeding 10 mph. It would be hard for an examiner to know the exact speed of the bike too.

If the driver was keeping up, the car speedo would be a good indication.

Yes, but you should actually be gaining on the bike, then before you get to it you move to overtake, the only reason to ever be pacing the bike is if there are oncoming cars. I was always told that "we will be watching the speed at all times..unless you are overtaking and then I will be watching the overtake" so I would say that they would not care what actual speed the bike was doing.

[Caddyshack]

ScoobyChris said:

Caddyshack said:

Very good point and could also be the reason for the fail.

You can overtake a pedal cycle, horse or road maintenance vehicle as long as it is not exceeding 10 mph. It would be hard for an examiner to know the exact speed of the bike too.

This is something that is great to throw into a commentary as it demonstrates knowledge of the HC and also justifies your decision to overtake/not overtake.

Chris

I am pretty certain that you would gain massive brownie points if you were able to give a few snippets of commentary on your driving test. A few "I am going to give this guy some space as he looks lost", " moving out, just in case that one pulls out of the junction", "parked cars here and that one has brake lights on so I am going to assume they are pulling out" - Reg Local talks about this for advanced and he says that when someone joins from the left at a side road he would say "I expect they might be turning right soon" as often people cross roads to move across the country.

[QBee]

vaud said:

QBee said:

I now live 15 miles north of there and know the roundabout well.
It's where the A52 (Stoke on Trent to Skegness) approaches from the opposite direction to the learners and does a 270 degree turn.
So it's always busy, with lots going on and lots to think about. Hence the warning before the test.

Asda is on your sharp left coming the way the learners do, so if you take the "Asda only" lane you end up doing a lane change on the roundabout to avoid ending up in Asda's car park. I suspect that's the reason for the fails.

And yes, I'm not a fan of Grantham either.

My inlaws live between Grantham and Newark; I much prefer Newark.

Me too - I live outside Coddington, but it's so handy having a nice town just 5 minutes away.
I have lived in the country now since 1978, but always within 5 miles of a town.

[The Gauge]

When booking a retest, do you go to the back of the queue and have to wait for a date, or do they give you cancellation slots?

[qwerty360]

The Gauge said:

Encountering a cyclist on your driving test in the circumstances described must be a nightmare, and very unfortunate. The test is stressful enough without added unwanted complications.

IMHO one thing we should be seriously looking at now is modern car simulators.

At least part of testing should be done in a simulator to see how drivers react to cyclists, horses, filtering motorbikes etc

Things that are a what, 1 in 100 (if not less) chance of seeing in real world on a 1 hr test drive.


I suspect this could actually be done relatively cheaply; an awful lot of failure cases could probably be detected automatically (simulator knows how fast you are going, how close you are to simulated vehicles, what colour traffic lights are etc;).



I do agree there are plenty of drivers who can't overtake cyclists properly. When cycling you often run into the fun of drivers who fail to overtake when safe, then decide having waited 30-60s for another safe gap that they are going to overtake regardless (usually at the most dangerous point...). Partly for the same reason as it being an issue on tests - you can have done quite a lot of driving without encountering many cyclists... And generally modern cars are relatively easy to drive and high performance - there aren't many cases where you overtake another vehicle on normal roads either.

[Robertb]

Hungrymc said:

119 said:

If the driver was keeping up, the car speedo would be a good indication.

In these days of e-bikes and cyclists who are pushing on a little for exercise, I'm finding it quite rare to find a bike on a rural road traveling slower than 10mph.

Same for construction and farm vehicles etc, a lot are doing high teens and therefore are not a legal overtake if crossing a white line.

There is a long downhill section on a route I regularly ride where I'll do 40mph and often get overtaken by drivers over double white lines. Generally, people take little notice of white lines when they are passing me and as a cyclist I have no problem with that, provided its an otherwise safe overtake. Its surprising how many drivers pass leaving lots of space but end up nearly having a head-on with an oncoming car.

In this case, I'm astonished a driving tester would insist on a candidate not only illegally crossing double white lines but also breaking the guidance of allowing 1.5m clearance. Imagine if there had been a collision.

[InitialDave]

Caddyshack said:

I would say that they would not care what actual speed the bike was doing.

I think the issue is, you have a rule that you mustn't cross the solid line, but may do so to overtake someone doing less than 10mph.

That allowance has too low a limit in my opinion, someone doing, say, 15mph can still be a massive impediment to traffic flow, and you should be allowed to pass them if safe.

In normal everyday driving, you wouldn't care about it being exactly 10mph, if they're just travelling "slowly", and it's safe to do so, you'd make the pass.

But on your test, you're really meant to be bang on what the letter of the rules is, so it kind of does matter the speed of the bike.

I think the only "correct" response to the examiner wanting you to pass the cyclist is the full explanation of "I don't believe I can safely pass this cyclist while giving them enough space without crossing the solid white line, and as they are traveling at more than 10mph, I do not have an exception to the rules on crossing a solid white line in order to do that".

[Solocle]

InitialDave said:

I think the issue is, you have a rule that you mustn't cross the solid line, but may do so to overtake someone doing less than 10mph.

That allowance has too low a limit in my opinion, someone doing, say, 15mph can still be a massive impediment to traffic flow, and you should be allowed to pass them if safe.

In normal everyday driving, you wouldn't care about it being exactly 10mph, if they're just travelling "slowly", and it's safe to do so, you'd make the pass.

But on your test, you're really meant to be bang on what the letter of the rules is, so it kind of does matter the speed of the bike.

I think the only "correct" response to the examiner wanting you to pass the cyclist is the full explanation of "I don't believe I can safely pass this cyclist while giving them enough space without crossing the solid white line, and as they are traveling at more than 10mph, I do not have an exception to the rules on crossing a solid white line in order to do that".

The issue isn't necessarily the 10 mph threshold, it's the use of double white lines to prohibit overtaking of other motor vehicles without thought to the low threshold.

E.g. a local section of the A30 got double white lined for over a mile a couple of years back, because of an issue with boy racers overtaking at the approach to a blind summit. About the first traffic offence I captured on camera when I got a cycliq was a chap overtaking me there while I was doing 20 - perfectly safe, so I wasn't fussed at all.

Said stretch of road:

In contrast, no overtaking signs can get more specific exemptions

[QBee]

You wouldn't be able to overtake a bike on the Menai bridge wihtout breaking the 1.5 metre rule, from that picture

[skwdenyer]

Robertb said:

Hungrymc said:

119 said:

If the driver was keeping up, the car speedo would be a good indication.

In these days of e-bikes and cyclists who are pushing on a little for exercise, I'm finding it quite rare to find a bike on a rural road traveling slower than 10mph.

Same for construction and farm vehicles etc, a lot are doing high teens and therefore are not a legal overtake if crossing a white line.

There is a long downhill section on a route I regularly ride where I'll do 40mph and often get overtaken by drivers over double white lines. Generally, people take little notice of white lines when they are passing me and as a cyclist I have no problem with that, provided its an otherwise safe overtake. Its surprising how many drivers pass leaving lots of space but end up nearly having a head-on with an oncoming car.

In this case, I'm astonished a driving tester would insist on a candidate not only illegally crossing double white lines but also breaking the guidance of allowing 1.5m clearance. Imagine if there had been a collision.

On further conversation, not only did the examiner insist on the learner overtaking *within* the lane (i.e. with no way of giving a decent gap to the cyclist), but the examiner attempted to get a hold of the wheel to force that to happen.

So we're all clear, none of this is about me supporting the learner in feeling nonspecifically aggrieved about a fail. Fails happen. Humans (including examiners) aren't infallible. Life sucks sometimes. But I am specifically concerned about this incident because it appears, on the face of it, to be egregious and dangerous.

[Caddyshack]

skwdenyer said:

Robertb said:

Hungrymc said:

119 said:

If the driver was keeping up, the car speedo would be a good indication.

In these days of e-bikes and cyclists who are pushing on a little for exercise, I'm finding it quite rare to find a bike on a rural road traveling slower than 10mph.

Same for construction and farm vehicles etc, a lot are doing high teens and therefore are not a legal overtake if crossing a white line.

There is a long downhill section on a route I regularly ride where I'll do 40mph and often get overtaken by drivers over double white lines. Generally, people take little notice of white lines when they are passing me and as a cyclist I have no problem with that, provided its an otherwise safe overtake. Its surprising how many drivers pass leaving lots of space but end up nearly having a head-on with an oncoming car.

In this case, I'm astonished a driving tester would insist on a candidate not only illegally crossing double white lines but also breaking the guidance of allowing 1.5m clearance. Imagine if there had been a collision.

On further conversation, not only did the examiner insist on the learner overtaking *within* the lane (i.e. with no way of giving a decent gap to the cyclist), but the examiner attempted to get a hold of the wheel to force that to happen.

So we're all clear, none of this is about me supporting the learner in feeling nonspecifically aggrieved about a fail. Fails happen. Humans (including examiners) aren't infallible. Life sucks sometimes. But I am specifically concerned about this incident because it appears, on the face of it, to be egregious and dangerous.

I do not believe you are being given a true version of events. An examiner is really only going to touch the wheel to avoid an accident. They know the highway code backwards and all the recent focus on pedestrian and cyclist priority would be at the forefront of their exam list.

It could be a rogue examiner gone crazy? If it is as you are being told then that would be totally wrong of the examiner.