I was talking about CBT yesterday. So another story. This from my own experience.
I had two students last week, both learning on electric scooters. If you’ve not ridden one of these abominations before, there is a specific technique to riding them. You have to push the green start switch to put it into ‘ready’ mode before you can ride it. It also has two riding modes – one and two. Two being the one to use out on the road. However, throttle response is quick. Very quick. Also, when you apply either brake, power to the throttle is immediately cut off, so no dragging the rear brake during low speed riding. Takes some getting used to.
Anyway, after a bit of a shaky start, both students got out onto the road after spending a morning on the pad going through the usual exercises. We were almost at the end of the road ride when the first incident happened. We are obliged to conduct emergency stop exercises on the road, so having found a suitable place, I asked them to pull over to the left and park their bikes. I then moved past them to park my own machine well out of the way. As I was putting the stand down, I became aware of something happening behind me. I turned to see that one of the students had ignored my instruction and had ridden up to where I was. He had then tried to dismount before taking the bike out of the ‘ready’ mode and poleaxed a lamp post, with significant cosmetic damage to the bike. I told him at that point that I would not be signing a CBT certificate that day and to be fair to him, he accepted this with good grace.
It was on the way back that it got really interesting. We were returning to the school, turning right off a major road when the lead student cut across another vehicle, causing the driver to brake.
Once back in, I spoke to this student.
“I’m sorry, but I will not be issuing a CBT certificate today. Do you understand why?”
“No.”
“Didn’t you hear me say ‘oh, my God!’ over the radio as we turned into the school? You cut across that car as you turned.”
“No.”
“Well, you caused another road user to take avoiding action. What you did was dangerous and I cannot sign you off today. You need more training.”
At which point, he told me that he was very upset at my decision and that he thought there was plenty of room. I repeated the point about the driver having to brake, so there wasn’t plenty of room and he could have been injured or killed, so, no, he wasn’t getting a certificate today. Then he switched to the bike having a sensitive throttle, so it wasn’t his fault, it was the bike. But who twisted it?
Then when this didn’t work, I got the psychological pressure – he had three busses to get to us and coming back would be very inconvenient and he needed to use his bike for work and I was causing him great inconvenience as a consequence, as if this was somehow my problem and that I should give two hoots, which I don’t. My role is to decide whether he is a safe enough rider to issue a CBT certificate, which, on this occasion, he wasn’t. End of discussion as far as I am concerned. His lack of life planning is not my emergency and certainly not my problem and I had no intention of allowing him to make it so.
If I was to sign him off, he said, he would, on his honour, promise never to do it again. It was a one-off. It would never happen again, he promised. Just issue a certificate and it would be alright.
Well, maybe, but it was a one-off that happened during a road ride assessment and one that I was unable to unsee, so, no, my decision was final. No certificate. Come back for further training.
I suppose it took about ten minutes or so before I reached a point where taking the radio off him and walking away to deal with other matters became the only way to stop it. The wheedling, begging and self-pity became too much. However, it is a behaviour I have seen before when working in the rail industry in a certain part of London. There are individuals who seem to think that the rules either don’t apply or that they can be bent or sidestepped with suitable pressure. At least he didn’t try to either threaten or bribe me, so that’s a bonus I suppose.
I give you two words here. Cultural enrichment.
If he went off and killed himself the following week it would have been your fault, so that had to be the right decision.
Quite and I made that point.
Who cares if he topped himself. It’s who he takes with him that is the issue.
It’s my name on the certificate, so I’m not going to sign anyone off until I’m sure.
You’s only sayin’ that ‘cos, artistically speakin’, I’s totally devoid of colour!
Cars have reverse gear)
Sounds like number 2 will fit right in to the delivery rider fraternity. TBH he’d be no worse than far too many drivers given how many left hooks I’ve had or seen whilst on my bicycle.
Actually, my colleague believes that is exactly what was planned and that he had a shift already organised on the basis of getting that CBT. He may be right.
Good fail
I often wonder what benefits multi-culti has brought us and can never think of any, but can identify many detriments. Don’t say food as a benefit, that’s recipes not culture
Food and music I think. Yes food can be made from recipes but the recipe has to be invented by someone. Foreign food that I like, Mexican, Indian, Italian, occasionally Chinese.
We’ve got the recipes now….
We’ve got the recipies now, but there’s a huge difference between a curry house curry and a pub curry 🙂
There is indeed – you get a proper pint with a pub curry….
What music do you refer to?
I assume not Bach, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Holst which is technically multi-culti as not Anglo/British
I can’t think of any multi-culti music that is good
Food: It’s recipes and we’ve been importing them and ingredients for centuries without the culture. Early example: potatoes
I have very eclectic tastes. I do like quite a bit of Blues Soul and Motown stuff which has black origins. I quite liked those albums that Paul Simon did with African harmonies and rhythms. I love Bach for his technical complexity. I like to play stuff from his Anna Magdalena Notebook, he didn’t write a lot of it he just collected it together, because it is within my rather limited keyboard abilities.
Home grown “talent” is equally capable of such antics…
And almost all, compliments of our Marxist infested, evereee-chuyuld-os-speshhhhulll, knowledge-lite, propagandized, I-know-my-rights +& sod everyone else), daytime crowd control units laughingly called “schools” turning out petulant narcissists with their heads full of crap. And that’s before they’re further groomed and corrupted, turned into indebted, coloured-haired snot-hanger-nose-ringed, unemployables with worthless “degrees” in crap such as “gender studies” by the scam artists infesting the degraded Univershitty Halls of Knackerdemia.
Like Pcar, I can think of nothing positive culturally from the recent influx. Child rape and ‘honour’ killings aren’t positives, nor the relentless assault on our liberties in order to stifle criticism. The specific I mention here is typical. Not the idea that rule breaking is okay – that’s not confined to any culture – but the expectation that I could be easily corruptible with a little psychological pressure. The only surprise being that I wasn’t offered a bung. Maybe if there hadn’t been a witness present, that might have happened. Yes, it’s the casual corruption that struck me as being a cultural import and, no, it isn’t a positive.