Over the weekend, many of our professional driving instructors have been involved with the young drivers scheme as run by Driving Force. The course is aimed at 14 – 16 year olds who have perhaps never even sat in the drivers seat of a car before. The objective is to get the young minds thinking ‘properly’ before they get involved in passively learning bad habits from their friends and family. Most 17 year old provisional licence holders come to driving lessons nowadays with some form of previous experience. It is most unusual to get someone at the age of 17 for a first driving lesson who hasn’t ‘been to the car park with their dad’ or ‘moved the car on their driveway’. Whereas previous experience is usually a good thing, these candidates have most of the time, been given poor, wrong, and sometimes dangerous advice. Even if these candidates do come for their first lesson with no driving knowledge, they will have, at least been watching anxiously as a passenger, so the drivers bad habits may be already imprinted on the young persons brain as ‘the right thing to do’.
By getting the candidates before they have started looking at these problems, we can imprint the ‘correct’ knowledge and understanding, so when they do eventually come to be 17 and hold a provisional licence, the driving instructor will have far less, or even no remedial work to do, and can get teaching from scratch.
The course we attended was held at Nailsea school where Driving Force have good relations through previous driving courses being held there. It was a three day course including class room and practical sessions. There were approximately 25 young attendees from 14years to 16years old.
Day one; Saturday included classroom sessions. Basic highway code theory. Legalities of vehicle ownership. MOT, Tax, Tyre regulations. Under bonnet POWDER daily checks. In the afternoon, the candidates were split into groups of 3 and introduced to the cars where basic control for moving off and stopping was covered. Simple junctions (off road), and if time allowed basic reversing manoeuvres.
Day two; Sunday was an early start as the young drivers were straight into the cars to carry on where Saturday left off. More reversing and clutch control was covered, and Emergency stopping. The grouping allowed one group to be in the cars, while a second group was in the classroom getting a well prepared presentation on vehicle ownership. What to look for when buying a car (log books and MOT forgeries). Also what to do when selling a car. Discussions were held on a mock crash situation and the attendees were actively involved, and did not hold back in giving their opinion!
Day three; This was the pinnacle of the course. The pupils from Nailsea school were met by a coach where they were swiftly transported to Castle Combe race circuit where the paddock area and circuit itself had been marked out as a mock road layout. This coincided with the first event organised by Castle Combe race circuit called Start Line where young members of the public could also get behind the wheel of a car off road under correct supervision and guidance for the first time. The Nailsea school pupils had a slight advantage as the basic skills were already covered, but by the end of the event, all young drivers managed to conquer the basic skills to move cars, change gears and drive at higher speeds (50mph was the circuit limit).
There were around 35-40 young drivers in total with a ratio of 2 pupils to one instructor. Each candidate was given equal amounts of training, and I think I can say that ALL atendees either from Nailsea school or the Start line event went home grinning from sheer excitement. There was also a specialist disability driving instructor there with an adapted car. One candidate had been told wrongly before that he would be unable to drive, but with the adapted car, this made his dream come true, he and his family are now even looking into the possibility of gaining his UK driving licence having proved that even with a disability, anything can be achieved with hard work and determination.
I am led to believe that the next Start Line event will be held at Castle Combe race circuit on Feb 13th 2012, so visit their site for more information on that individual event. (click the start line logo below)
Belt Up School of Motoring are also looking to get involved with Driving Force to offer the school program to schools in the Midsomer Norton, Radstock and Frome areas. Discussions are hopefuly going to go ahead with the main schools in the area, and we are looking to be at the forefront of delivering this fantastic course as set out by Driving Force. Driving force are passionate about their courses, and I am starting to understand why.. They have also written a Btec course which has been recently accredited by Edexcel, so the possibilities of young driver training are endless. We have Male and Female driving instructors with Belt Up who share this passion for road safety, and we all believe that getting the message out to the young adults at this stage will set them up for their further driving careers, hopefully at the same time, helping to reduce the horribly high number of road incidents in our area which involve the younger age groups.
