Category: News

i's on the road only, please

27/9/2014

As Apple launches its iWatch, motoring organisations are voicing their concerns that drivers will take their eyes off the road to read or control their wrist-worn devices. As with Google Glass, we shall see how the law treats these technologies when the first few accidents come to Court.

Help finding your first car ...

22/9/2014

One of my current students has got me green with envy ! I always fancied a Fiat 500 for teaching, although they are rather confined in the back. So it'll be a delight to ride in one again as she's picking it up on Saturday and we'll continue our learning using that. (As you draw nearer to test, we can of course "go for a real drive" to look some possible cars, if you want my help sourcing and/or negotiating).

I've been published !

9/9/2014

The article with the Darth Vader pic, on p20; that's me. To quote the blurb: "Another new series of articles track the trials and tribulations of a new member of the driving instructor fraternity. Following on from our series last year looking at the challenges and honest impressions of a learner driver, here we look at the trainee driving instructor, why this industry, what he expects, and what is actually delivered on the road to becoming an ADI." I hope it can help others considering this career.

Opt-out telemetric "black boxes"

28/7/2014

It does seem to be the way the insurance industry is going. And who can blame it ? ECall is set to be a new-car requirement within a couple of years (so a crashed car can summon the emergency services itself) and, by 2020, the expectation is that drivers will need to say if they DONT want their vehicle fitted with small electronic equipment to record their reaction times, style of braking, locations, and times of travel.

And here's an alternative: downloading your insurance company's free app to do the job of the black box for you. Big Brother ? Undoubtedly. But it will save you money. Amusing how, in a little over fifty years, George Orwell's dystopia has started to be realised not through harsh communism but it's diametric opposite, free enterprise (!)

"New dress ?"

11/7/2014

Well ... since you're polite enough to ask; yes ! The teaching car is in the last stages of being stripped naked and redressed in this Season's new scheme: as an independent ADI. I'm very pleased. Before it left the signwriter's shop an African fellow had walked in and enquired why a car with "driving school" in French was parked outside. We chatted a little, then I heard him calling a friend, quoting my number ... in French. So "The Car's The Advert" is true

If "twenty's plenty", is thirty ... shirty?

8/7/2014

The great speed limit debate. I had a useful, and VERY thorough conversation with officers of the City Council a couple of weeks ago.

We discussed such aspects as: (1) who will police speeding cyclists; (2) how will statisticians interpret the possible INCREASE in traffic accidents during the pilot scheme, as pedestrians misread vehicles' intentions; (3) what will be the realistic reactions of local residents after the major disruption of all that new signage and road-marking; (4) might someone write a handy app, for road users to download, which 'silently' gathers anonymous movements data (instead of relying on labour-intensive monitoring, or crude and posthumous accident stats); (5) within a decade, will there be even further major disruption (and cost!) if the national urban speed limit is 'found to be better' at 20mph instead of 30mph.

I missed making a written contribution to the consultation deadline, but noted that there is another way. I've yet to read all that. Perhaps you'd like to?

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