Being a driver, for however long, be it four years or forty, you will have picked up a few habits along the way. For some reason, it appears that drivers who had to sit the theory test as part of their driving test fare better, possibly because this was the point at which tuition became more structured. So I assumed my driving would be assessed, and we would take it from there. No such luck. I arrived for my first driving lesson which was to be in a Fiesta diesel, I hadn’t driven a diesel for years, so was a little taken by surprise when the car had moved on before I was ready. I had a bad feeling about this test now.

My instructor was really nice, but I know now had absolutely no experience of part two training, we ran through the manoeuvres, as unlike the regular learner test, all the manoeuvres have to be completed. We started with turn in the road, now because I had sat the examiner test which is along the same lines, I had more knowledge of what was expected of me.



Observations, I thought I was all seeing, all doing, and the move went well. Dry steering is something that has come up as a don’t do more in the last ten years, there never used to be any particular opinion on this method, especially in the days when power steering was on luxury cars. As most learner cars are quite a low specification for obvious reasons, dry steering was the only way round unless you wanted huge muscles. Okay for the chaps, but for the girls it wasn’t really something they hankered after. Nowadays, dry steering comes up in the theory test and is particularly frowned upon in terms of wear and tear.

We moved on to reversing around a corner to the left, this was where driving a diesel became a little more complicated. As soon as you begin to lift the clutch, off it goes, flying so to speak. I’ve never been great at backing around a corner anyway, or at least I wasn’t then. My theory being, men back round corners, women drive around the block. But there was no getting away from this one, I had to look all around, and back up slowly, the problem was because I was already an experienced driver my instructor didn’t instruct, but let me carry on, ready to criticise later. It was at this point I decided I needed to sell my auto and buy a manual car I could take my test in, she was very patient with me, but after the third time I drove down the road in 1st waiting for the change up to happen on its own, she reminded me we had a clutch. Whoops. I needed practise, and ten hours in this car was absolutely not going to be enough.

Right hand corner reverse followed the left one, and this was much harder, I knew I was rubbish at it anyway, I tried to look over my left shoulder, then over the right and watch down the road, in five seconds I was dizzy. Was it really necessary to not only have to reverse on the wrong side of the road, but with impossible vision and further back. I didn’t think so, in fact I still think it’s a daft idea but it’s not my decision. I watched the kerb over my right shoulder in the end, at the expense of missing a car trying to turn into the same road. This needed serious commitment.

Feeling a little put out that I couldn’t show off my fantastic driving skills, but instead felt a little amateur, we made our way to a parked car, and talked parallel park. This was easy, I could park my car on a postage stamp. But not this one. I swung back into the space, tight to the kerb, with possible five centimetres between me and the car in front. Too close.

The verdict was, my driving was very good (well I could have told her that before we left) and my manoeuvres were not. Hmmm. So I set off to the auctions and bought a nearly new Astra, 28,000 miles, full service history, one owner and a slipping clutch, a challenge in itself, but it would have to do. I was going to take my test in this car, so I had to know it well. I started with the corner reverse, every night I drove off to the same corner and went backwards until my daughter refused to get in the car with me incase mummy made her tummy churn. So now I didn’t just need to spend hours trying to perfect the moves, I also needed a babysitter. This is when it became tougher, I could leave the house at six for an hour, but had to be back just after seven. So that became my routine, I headed down the same roads and practised, then it dawned on me, I might know these corners perfectly but what about the ones on the test route.

So I decided to book my test and take it from there, having a goal to aim for may help me get on with it properly. I was shaking when I rang the DSA, reference number at the ready, but I needn’t have worried, the first test date was for three months time. So I settled back, big mistake. I didn’t take another lesson for a couple of weeks, my idea was take half the lessons and then if I failed I could have the other five later. My instructor talked me out of it, her reasoning was if I passed, which she felt was likely, I’d lost my money for the ten lessons anyway. Better to take them all and then pay for extra if I needed to.

But still I eeked them out, which was a good idea, as the days started to trickle by I started to feel impatient, we had driven down the motorway and Judy said get to seventy straight away, he’ll expect you to make progress. Well, my idea of progress was join the inside lane and let the speed build up slowly, not how I’d normally drive on a motorway. I used motorways nearly everyday and considered myself to be good at it. So we did get to seventy, but I could feel eyes burning through me, I had settled behind a lorry doing fifty. I had to pull myself together, this wasn’t even a test, so I mirror checked, and did a blind spot glance into lane two and off I went, unfortunately the lorry had hidden the fifty speed restriction and all I can say is it’s just as well there was no camera. It was true, I had seen the roadworks signs, but as there were no lane closures hadn’t taken too much notice of where they begun.

This was my first real lesson in becoming an instructor, watching the speed limits and obeying them, not just driving at whatever speed suited me. I asked the obvious question, would I have failed for that and she said yes. So now I was left with the thought of more motorway practice, the one area I was sure I was safe. The stress began to show quite quickly after that, I’d gone from blasé to nervy, I couldn’t quite grasp the fact that my driving wasn’t perfect. Then on the way home feeling totally demoralised I cut the corner, after not checking my mirrors in pairs.

Anne Reynolds (ADI)

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