We’ve all had them, everyone who has ever taught driving or riding will recognise the GNI – the God never intendeds. The people, who, so long as they have a hole in their arse will never, ever, master the art of driving a motor vehicle. But they still try…
The question of whether some people are congenitally unsuited to controlling a clutch has been raised by news of a Kent woman who hasn’t passed her test after 250 lessons, earning her the title of Britain’s Worst Driver. Janine Mars, 31, a construction worker from Chatham, has spent more than £5,000 on lessons over 14 years, and failed four tests.
You would think by now she would have got the message. You would think that her instructor would have gently broken the news to her that she is wasting her money. This is simply a skill she cannot manage and never will. There’s no shame in it. Some people just can’t. It’s the way of the world. Sometimes, you just have to accept it and give up.
“I think I will learn one day,” she said.
Apparently not. And, no, she won’t. She might – just might – scrape through a test if the wind is blowing in the right direction and nothing goes wrong for about half an hour. However, she will then be a menace on the roads and the rest of us will have to take the necessary avoiding action.
“I just find there’s so much to think about, what with the steering wheel, pedals, gear lever and everything that’s happening on the road. It doesn’t come naturally.”
In which case, please do the rest of us a favour and stop. Just stop. The fates are sending you a message and that message is; stop. Please. Now.
“Over the years the government has conducted a reasonable amount of research into the psychology of driving. For a lot of people, that comes down to attitudes, and attitudes really aren’t tested in the driving test. I think there is scope to incorporate traffic psychology more into the testing procedure.”
Oh my… If these people are the ones we are relying on to help us keep our roads safe, we are dead in the water. The GNI frequently has precisely the right attitude. Often, in my experience, too much of it. They are over-cautious because they want to be safe and fail to get on with it and make reasonable progress. No, what they lack is aptitude which is an entirely different thing. So, a combination of coordination skills, attitude, aptitude and an ability to anticipate and plan ahead while carrying out the relevant motor functions is what is needed. The GNI just doesn’t have that combination. They may be very clever, super intelligent, even, but cannot turn a steering wheel while moving their feet in opposite directions at the same time. These people should never have a driving licence.
You’re so cruel; these poor people have a human right to drive. What’s needed is a special equality-balanced driving test to diminish the negative effects of their inabilities. Hang on a moment, I think we’ve already got one which passes them – have you driven to your local supermarket lately?
Yeah, heartless, that’s me… 😉
And, yes, I have.
You tend to meet people daily, who have somehow passed their driving test but still haven’t a clue. Most commonly:
Failure to maintain adequate progress to the point that they have an empty road ahead of them and twenty cars behind.
Incorrect road position when turning right, again causing a queue of cars behind.
Incomprehensible signalling at roundabouts, signalling the opposite way to the direction that they turn.
Driving at a constant 45mph regardless of the speed limit or the conditions.
Inability to park.
E.G. http://youparklikeacunt.com/
According to the article she is a construction worker. Given that she cannot master driving a car, I am somewhat concerned at the thought that I might have to go into a building she has had a part in building…
Different skill set.
Why can’t some people just accept that they aren’t very good at this driving business? Most of us are really good at some things and totally crap at others, and don’t have any trouble accept this perfectly normal state of affairs. So why the inability to accept the same about driving? I personally think it’s about the driving test itself. It’s as if, once they’ve passed, then as far as most people are concerned, they assume that this means that they are a “good” driver, when in fact all the test actually proves is that one has achieved some fairly basic skills and some fairly basic knowledge which (hopefully) indicates that one isn’t an out-and-out hazard on the road. It certainly doesn’t mean that someone who passed their test a week ago is in any way as good as a driver who’s been on the road for 20-odd years and gleaned a whole lot of road experience, both good and bad, since then.
I personally think that it would improve road safety enormously to do away with the whole pass-or-fail test altogether and replace it with an ongoing programme of “refresher” lessons, compulsory for all drivers at regular intervals. Brand-new drivers would have to have at least, say, about a week’s worth (40 hours) of initial lessons with a qualified instructor; once that was completed they could then drive alone on the road – maybe with those “P” plates and only in a vehicle of limited power/speed and perhaps not carrying any passengers – for, say a month or two, before going back for another batch of lessons to consolidate the practical skills they’d previously learned together with their newly-achieved real-life experience on the road; then returning after maybe six months; then a year; then a couple of years; until, eventually – after, say five years – joining all experienced drivers who would have to attend a “refresher” lesson or two every ten years for the rest of their driving lives.
The point about these lessons would be the “refresher” element – there’d be no “pass” to attain, and so no complacency about believing that one has been sanctioned as a “good” driver, and no “fail” to worry about, so no need to drive artificially “perfectly” (which, let’s be honest, we could all do on a one-off basis), because the whole point would be to drive as one normally does – warts and all – precisely because the point of the refresher session is for the instructor to point out all those bad little habits which (again, let’s be honest), we all develop over time, sometimes subconsciously. The proviso would be that if an instructor genuinely believed at any stage in the process that the driver was a serious danger to be on the road (not just “not very good,” which, although irritating, isn’t necessarily particularly dangerous) they would have the power to refuse to move them onto the next stage. This would get the message through to drivers like the one in this story that, essentially, they’re never going to be safe enough to drive alone on the road, and it would also tackle the occasionally-raised issue of very elderly people who really shouldn’t be driving, whilst allowing those elderly people who are perfectly safe to drive to continue to do so (rather than the predictable knee-jerk demands for everyone over, say, 80 to be banned from driving automatically every time an incompetent elderly driver causes an accident – why is there never the same demands made when someone, for example, distracted by squabbling children in the rear seat causes an accident, or someone who’s just passed their test ploughing their parents’ large powerful car into something/someone?).
Such a system could also be useful in handing out sanctions against people who drive dangerously or badly. Never mind all those meaningless “speed awareness” courses that pretty much no-one I know takes a blind bit of notice of (most only go because it’s a better option than getting points) – if one is caught speeding then one could be made to go “back” to a previous stage in the process, such as going back from ten-yearly refresher sessions to yearly ones and then having to work through the system to get back to the ten-yearly stage. Ditto drink-drivers (after their ban was finished) or those driving without due care and attention etc.
The biggest downsides that I can envisage to such a system are that it would almost certainly have to be administered/organised by one of the Government agencies – most of whom, as we know, couldn’t organise a conga line at a party, let alone a radical reorganisation of the driving test/lesson setup; and that politicians just wouldn’t be able to resist using the system in order to achieve their latest political anti-driver wish-list by bringing in compulsory pass-or-fail-type elements – thus eliminating the “refresher” intention of the lessons and bringing back the hard-and-fast “do’s and don’ts” that we have with the current test setup which causes all the problems that we have with bad drivers on the road today. In fact, if “the authorities” could be kept firmly out of the picture, apart, perhaps from having to issue the necessary paperwork that the appropriate sessions had been undertaken, I think it would work perfectly well, and our roads would be much safer as a result.
‘You would think that her instructor would have gently broken the news to her that she is wasting her money.’
And kill the golden goose..?
Some things just aren’t worth the stress and hassle even if it does mean money. Teaching a GNI is unbelievably stressful. Frankly, I’d rather not.
When I taught CBT I had a real GNI, at the end of her second attempt her parents had come along and I told them bluntly that IF I gave her a certificate I would never be able to sleep KNOWING that she would be involved in an accident. I explained that although she was OK, just, when calm as soon as she became the slightest bit flustered, which was every few minutes, as you say, stress! 3 times she had my heart in my mouth, the last one was turning back into the training ground, how the car missed her turning right in front of it I’ll never know, literally there was no time even to react to the stupid move she had carried out.
Unlike car instructors, all we have is our voice. If the student does something stupid, by the time our brains have analysed it, there isn’t time to vocalise.