Need help with driving lessons in the Milton Keynes and Buckingham area? Or are you just looking for advise and tips on how to improve your driving. This blog on driving is here to help you. Feel free to check out my posts and subscribe.
The average pass rate in Milton Keynes for the driving test and the Uk is 49% which tell's you that half of the people who take there driving test are probably not ready to take it for one or more of these reasons:
Not had professional driving lessons with a approved driving instructor to advise them when to take test
Listening to music makes the everyday task of driving from A to B, a little bit less boring. Whether your music tastes lie with ACDC or Mozart, we all love to bop along to our favourite tunes whilst in the car. But just how does the music you listen to affect your performance at the wheel?
We’ve come up with an infographic that explains how influential your music preferences are in relation to your driving. We’ve got it all covered, from song type to tempo and even volume! Take a look and see will you change the tune of your next road trip!
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7147StumbleUpon101Google +7192
SHARE THIS INFOGRAPHIC ON YOUR WEBSITE
- See more at: http://www.nononsense.ie/a-load-of-facts/How-Music-Affects-Your-Driving/#sthash.j9SMWE71.dpuf
James Foxall says buying part-worn tyres is a gamble that's not worth taking
Replacing a punctured tyre with a part-worn one is a step into the unknown / Photo: Getty Creative
There can be few more irritating things than getting a puncture in a new tyre. But do you then replace it or get it fixed? There is after all a hefty price differential: a new tyre can cost upwards of £100, whereas you can get a tyre repaired for about a quarter of that. The answer seems obvious. But is it?
Tyres go through an awful lot in their daily life and you definitely don't want one to fail suddenly. The most recent Department for Transport stats show that illegal, defective or underinflated tyres account for more than half of the motorway crashes that are caused by vehicle faults. And you would imagine that a tyre that's been repaired is more likely to fail.
Not so, according to tyre maker Continental. "A puncture repair should last the life of a tyre if it's been done properly," said technical services manager Steve Howat. "But whether tyres can be repaired is restricted by a British Standard. This controls the size of the hole, and how badly the tyre has been damaged by the puncture."
Loosely speaking, if the damage to the tyre is on what's known as the shoulder - the part between the treaded area and the sidewall - it probably isn't repairable. And if there are any wires visible within the tyre, it definitely isn't.
Howat revealed: "We've seen some horrendous repairs where the tyre has been punctured right on the edge of the belts and someone's put a plug patch in there." So while tyre repairs can be OK, replacing punctured or worn-out tyres with second-hand ones with an unknown history isn't a good idea.
Search "part-worn" on the internet and some websites could almost convince you otherwise. Almost. Then I saw that a dealer has just been fined £26,000 and been given a nine-month suspended sentence for supplying dangerous goods, in his case tyres balder than I am.
If I needed further discouragement, a chat with the National Tyre Distributors' Association (NTDA) provided it. Director Stefan Hay told me: "We work closely with the Trading Standards Institute investigating part-worn tyres and the findings can be horrific. We've even seen tyres being sold that have been repaired with the nail that punctured them still in place."
You might think this is because of a lack of regulation. But actually it's down to the perennial problem of a lack of enforcement. The result, according to the NTDA, is that part-worn tyres are big business in Britain, despite the safety concerns.
"You really don't know what you're getting when you a buy a part-worn tyre," said Hay. "If I was on a strict budget, I'd buy new budget tyres instead. You can get them for £35 and you know you're getting an undamaged tyre with 8mm of tread. With most part-worns, you're lucky if you get much more than 2mm."
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Why trying to cut corners on driving instruction can end up costing more money than it saves
A qualified instructor is a sound investment for a learner driver / Photo: Alamy
This year, 1.5 million prospective drivers will attempt to transform their provisional licence – surely driving’s embarrassing equivalent of holding your dad’s hand – to the far more coveted full licence. Of those, just under half will pass. But new figures show the number of people passing the test at the first attempt is down compared with 20 years ago.
Learning to drive is a pricey business. Lessons usually cost between £20 and £25. And someone starting from scratch will need between 30 and 40 lessons. Even in the best-case scenario, just getting to the test can cost £600. It’s hardly surprising, then, that research by breakdown organisation Green Flag suggests young drivers are eschewing the traditional driving schools in favour of lessons from mum and dad.
Since 1994, the number of people using driving schools has fallen from 50 per cent to 34 per cent. Meanwhile, the number choosing to be taught by their parents has risen by 25 per cent, meaning more than three-quarters of parents are now playing the role of driving instructor. However, Green Flag’s survey of 1,000 people shows that over that same period, the pass rate for first timers has dipped from 48 to 42 per cent. And there’s a cost implication to that.
According to the Driving Instructors’ Association (DIA), most driving tests are taken in cars with dual controls, implying that many pupils do have the odd lesson in the run-up to a test. DIA chief examiner Mike Frisby told me: “Taking the test is an expensive business. The test itself is £62. Then you want a two-hour lesson to accompany it, one hour to prepare and one hour for the test itself, so that’s already more than £100.”
He said that one reason for failure is that learners commonly go for their test before they’re ready. “A professional is much better placed to judge when someone is capable of passing their test than a parent. The price of failing the test could be the price of four or five lessons. So it could actually work out cheaper to get kids a bit more tuition than to put them in for a test that they fail.”
One parent who is all too aware of the cost of learning to drive is Green Flag’s national roadside rescue operations manager Neil Wilson. His 18-year-old son Nile passed on his third attempt. Neil said: “Taking the test is a significant cost burden. By teaching a kid themselves, parents could be saving the cost of lessons. But if they can’t get them through the test, the extra cost could negate any saving they make. One of the things I found was that I didn’t know what goes into the driving test these days. An instructor does.”
Nile, the 2014 British junior gymnastics champion, had about 35 lessons with a professional as well as practising with Neil. He admitted that the biggest difference between having his dad or an instructor beside him was that things sometimes got “quite heated” when driving with his father but were always totally calm with the professional instructor.
Mike Frisby, from the DIA, says: “Learning to drive is far more than simply moving a car from A to B. It’s about attitude, behaviour, a whole variety of situations and how you go about dealing with them. But kids still need the support of the parents. The most successful learner drivers are the ones who benefit from parental input.”
As with all forms of education, there are teachers. And then there are teachers. One of the peculiarities of learning to teach driving is that you can ply your trade as an instructor before you’re fully qualified. “This is going to change,” said Frisby. “But for the moment you need to be aware of who’s teaching you. You want a fully qualified driving instructor, so look out for a green rather than pink badge in their windscreen. Buying cheap is not the way to go.”
From today (Monday 8 June 2015), the qualification route for all approved driving instructors (ADIs) will be the same.
The changes brought in by the Deregulation Act 2015 have removed the ‘Disabled ADI’ category. This makes the qualification process for medically restricted licence holders the same as it is for those with a full licence. Instructors with disabilities will no longer be:
made to pass the additional Emergency Control Assessment (ECA) automatically before registering
restricted to delivering paid post-test training in automatic cars
What this means
trainee instructors who hold a medically restricted licence can now become ADIs
the Registrar can ask any instructor to pass an ECA at any time during the qualification process or registration period – we would expect this to apply only in exceptional circumstances
it's no longer an offence for ADIs with a medically restricted licence to provide paid instruction in a manual vehicle if the person receiving training has a full driving licence
The road tax. Did you know that under the new rules when the car is signed over to you it will need to be taxed in your name. Even if your mum or dad has given you there old car with tax and m.o.t. on. www.drive-travis.co.uk
So next time you are thinking about buying a second hand car, or even given a car, remember the road tax will not carry over to you. The old owner will get a refund and you have to get it taxes again, otherwise you could find yourself on the wrong side of the law.http://www.drive-travis.co.uk/road-tax-changes
Back in January, Grazia writer Anna Hart wrote about the challenges of learning to drive when you’re 30, blogging about it here.
WATCH OUT WORLD: I’m officially a driver. Today I had a sunny drive around Wanstead with a nice man called Kevin, only stalling twice and swearing once, and at the end of it he said the magic words: “Well done, Anna, I’m going to pass you today.” Nothing prepares you for the flood of joy that comes from passing your driving test. Particularly if, like me, you’ve postponed learning to drive for years, making excuses, developing weird phobias, and convincing yourself a skill that any 17-year-old boy appears to master in six weeks will remain tantalisingly out of your grasp forever.
Now I finally know how to pass your driving test, and I also know how not to, because two weeks ago, I flunked my first driving test. Failing your driving test is not a pretty feeling. It’s pretty much the worst Tinder date of your life. The examiner feels sorry for you, they wish you well, but they can’t wait to get away from you and they’re stuck right next to you. You feel guilty and apologetic but also crazily desperate to prove to them that you’re not a total loser after all. Failing your driving test is one of the worst ways to spend 40 minutes I’ve ever come across. But now that I’ve passed, I can see exactly how I nailed failing the first time around. Here’s my failsafe way of failing your driving test:
1. Expect to fail. I told myself that I was bound to fail, that all the best drivers fail first anyway, that I shouldn’t really expect to pass. Then, things went surprisingly well, but I’d already worked myself into such a pitch of nerves and doom that I made a dumb error (okay, I nearly squashed a pedestrian on a crossing) and flunked on that one serious error.
2. Rush it. Because my attitude was ‘let’s get this fail over with asap’, I did everything far too quickly. And got rattled. And then tried to squash a pedestrian. Be cool!
3. Be tough on yourself. Pre-test, my inner mantra was ‘Oh FFS, you have to go flunk your test today, UGH’. Afterwards, it was, ‘You knew you were going to fail, and you FAILED, you massive, massive loser.’ Obviously, I would not let anyone other than me talk to myself this harshly. And guess what: it really doesn’t help.
4. Give up. Halfway through, I stalled. And then tried to move off with the handbrake on. And I convinced myself I’d failed, and got so despondent and stressed that I made the serious error that actually caused me to fail.
The world is Anna's oyster now she's got her driving license.
This time around, I did everything right. I took three 2-hour lessons with Mario this week in preparation. I did yoga every day this week. I skipped coffee and drank heaps of water and ate well before my test, instead of dehydrating myself massively because I was so worried I’d need to pee halfway through. I wore clothes that made me feel good, having planned a preppy ‘I am such a good driver!’ outfit earlier this week. I even wore my hair in pigtails, because that helps the examiner see that you’re checking the mirrors. But the most important thing I changed? How I talked to myself. “What a lovely day to pass my test! I can’t wait to pass my driving test today! Golly, passing my test is going to be SUCH FUN, that lucky instructor next to me!” I know, I know. But you don’t need to be a positive-thinking automaton for your entire life. Just the morning of your driving test.
And when you pass, all of this, and all of the lessons, are totally worth it. I nearly kissed Kevin. I did hug Mario, my ever-patient and utterly brilliant BSM Driving Instructor, who I wholeheartedly recommend to drivers in a similar boat to me. I excitedly told my mum, my husband, and a couple of London Underground staff who got in my way.
I suddenly realised that I had no plans for the evening, because I couldn’t quite imagine a time after my test ever arriving; it was like a big wall in my diary had finally come down and I could look into the future. A future in which I can rent a Mustang and drive the Pacific Coast Highway. Or pop over to a friend’s house in West London without spending four hours on public transport or £60 on Uber. Or be a useful daughter, picking up my parents from the airport instead of having to rely on them all the time like a teenager. A future in which I get to one day shop for a CAR, which is even more exciting than shopping for a new coat.
Learning to drive was my big resolution for 2015, and now that I’ve succeeded, the rest of my year is completely transformed.
Road trip, anyone? To book driving lessons with BSM, visit www.bsm.co.uk. To book lessons with Anna’s amazing East London-based instructor Mario, call 07842 569303.
