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[w3526602]

Hi,

A friend's daughter failed her driving test, for pulling in and stopping where she thought the examiner had told her to. She had stopped too close to a dropped kerb.

Of course she didn't know she had failed until the end of the test, so was unable to to check the exact situation. Deliberate Booby trap? Can you be failed for not complying with the examiners instructions because you consider them dangereous or illegal.

602 (who passed in 1958, after three BSM lessons, and again in 1960 in a Bedford RL truck, mixing it with the trams in Blackpool. My son passed after 6 professional lessons, and Barbara after one.)

[Ndrwdz]

My friend turned left instead of right in her driving test (late 1980s) but still passed, as she'd done the manoeuvre correctly and safely, just didn't know 'left' from 'right'.

Andrew

[agg221]

After the lockdown = visit to the barber's!!!

(If they don't reopen soon I shall buy a suitably smelly Afghan coat.......)

You should see how my lockdown beard is coming on! I'm not sure the Red Lion will let us back in after lockdown ends.

I have SORNed my car - the average mileage of under 25 a month didn't seem worth £20 a month for the privilege, so I am now using my wife's Midget for the very occasional trips necessary - quieter roads makes it more enjoyable as I don't get so many idiots who fail to understand the concept of 'braking distance'. However, I have observed that speed is a major issue. I live on the edge of a 30/60 transition and it was always observed in cursory fashion (more like 45/60) but now it is outright ignored through the village. Last time I came home I built up a queue of 10 impatient cars due to my having the temerity to drive at 30 in a 30 limit right through the village.

Alec

[w3526602]

Hi,

I understood that touching the kerb with your rear wheel during the Three Point Turn, was an automatic fail.

I managed to touch the kerb with the rear wheel of my Bedford RL. I looked at the examiner with raised eye-brows.

He said not to worry. Lovely man!

602

[diffwhine]

Is it physically possible to do a 3 point turn in a Bedford RL? I need to do the maths, but unless you have a very wide road - perhaps a boulevard...
Bit like a Series 1 107 with the original front axle. Easier to do a 3 point turn in the Solent with our new super dooper aircraft carrier I reckon.

[w3526602]

Bit like a Series 1 107 with the original front axle.

Hi Diffwhine,

Strange you should say that ...

Many Yonks ago (mid-1980s?), Barbara was driving my LWB S1 (Just an interesting, and cheap, truck in those days) I can't remember what year, and I was not aware, then, that there were two wheel bases.

Somewhere, I should have, or did have, a photo of it, in my top field, mixing it with my equines. )

Whatever, Barbara had to do a hairpin bend, from Glais Road (Clydach) into Ynysymond Road, opposite the Globe Pub.  Oops!   

I would say the nastiest truck I ever drove was a hired Ford Cargo car transporter, to collect my first "new chassis S1 project, from the middle of nowhere in South Wales. Narrow country lanes, and hairpin 360s.

Throttle like a JATO boosted switch, brakes like hitting the North face of the Eiger, and a turning circle which was more like a tangent.  The RL was benign by comparison. No doubt I'd have got used to it ... eventually.  I spent most of that trip "biting buttons" off the drivers seat cushion.  But no "incidents".

602

[Formerlyjeremy]

Well some things never change - like the mid-morning drunks on the A27 around Southampton.  Roads may be clear - but they're still about 7MPH under the limit, wandering around, waiting at roundabouts until the road to the left is clear.  We have a new joy as well - queues for tips (sorry - recycling centres) - blocking roundabouts completely and hence the approach roads.  (And there I has blaming the B&Q Corporate Headquarters (or should it be corpulent hindquarters) management whose car park management is so bad that staff can queue for about 1/2 mile down the road from their own roundabout to the re-cycling centre roundabout near clocking-on time.)

So does mid-morning drinking confer immunity to Corona?

[Peter Holden]

I touched the kerb, not a bump during the 3 point turn on my test in the late 60s.  I passed and after the test the examiner made a comment about my expert control.  It was the 5th time that I had ever driven an ordinary car,   I learned to drive in a series2 land rover and a VW split screen camper.  He also made a comment about me looking for wing mirrors whilst manoeuvring.  We then had a short discussion where he made a comment that I was a competent driver in an unfamiliar vehicle.  I should have taken the test in the VW.  I took my test in Sheffield and I thought the examiners were more interested in your ability to do hill starts

Peter

[agg221]

So does mid-morning drinking confer immunity to Corona?

On the Trump principle, yes, so long as you are drinking hand sanitiser.

Alec

[Kernowcam]

Talking about driving tests and examiners. Anyone remember the inbetweeners and simon taking his test with the 'very helpful'female examiner who seemed to like young men. Hillarious.

[Old Hywel]

....... I thought the examiners were more interested in your ability to do hill starts

Peter

My hillstart was flawless. I’ve never matched it since. Three speed column change Vauxhall Victor.

[Genem]

I took my test in an MoD 109 GS driving about the streets of an unsuspecting Newcastle, late 1981. The "3 point turn" task was completed in a Victorian era terraced residential street with massive kerbs and a very pronounced camber, the Examiner actually commented that it would test how strong my arms were. I wasn't counting but I suspect it was nearer 13 points than 3.... shortly afterwards he asked me to turn right at a set of lights... mirror, signal, manoeuvre to the right, drop a cog ….and the gear-lever snapped off at the tunnel, leaving the vehicle in neutral. Came to a stop behind the queue of traffic, handbrake and hazards on. "Now what ?" says I, waving the gearstick.....

...Answer was that we found a phone-box, got recovery back to Barracks - a tow from a 4 Tonner, picked up another landrover and 15 minutes more driving. Pass.

[Rory]

As a young lad I was often heard to comment that I'd love to drive round Cambridge in an old Land Rover with big galvanized bumpers, they'd soon get out of the way. 

Done that whist based at Waterbeach back in 89, it’s surprising how clear the road gets in front of you of oncoming cyclist, often going the wrong way in one way streets when in a LWB series III and how when you drive down the same in a Bedford Mk everything clears.

[crumbly65]

The Head of the Civil Service, together with the Head of the Cabinet Office, has put out advice in line with Government policy.

It is that working from home is to be "the default position", during, and I understand, post COVID-19.  It is also the intention that the Civil Service should therefore be "an exemplar" in this respect.

The implications of that intention on the way we lived pre-COVID are enormous.  If all the people whose jobs involve spending their working day in front of a computer screen (and that seems to be the norm these days), are now going to be working from home, what's the future for example, for the enormous skyscraper offices in places like Canary Wharf and the City of London?

No rates revenues for the Local Authority for a start.  No rental income for the property developers, no income for the hospitality areas surrounding those offices, so they fold, with an added rates, landlord/property company revenue fall.....

And that's just one small unsympathetic example.  The western industrialised world, which has been talking about changes for a long time due to advances in technology, and pressure from the environmental lobbies, has suddenly had change forced upon it.

The only sure thing in these uncertain times, is that it will be us ordinary people who will bear the pain and/or cost of the changes.  It's going to be the younger generations who are going to have to deal with it.  Me? - I just hope to be trundling about in my S11 on more traffic-free roads, until my dotage renders me even more incapable, and I go to the never-never.

It's going to be emotional folks..... 

[Formerlyjeremy]

Office blocks will be re-purposed as flats - there are a lot of them - so possibly we'll end up with a surplus of housing - which will cause the bottom to fall out of the property market - so it could mean rationing of conversions to maintain prices.

(Cheap housing sounds good - but if the price collapses then there's loads of mortgages in negative equity, the whole of the secured financial system becomes under threat and there's the risk of financial armageddon - which is probably good news if you live in a tent but needs at least to be considered carefully before its allowed to happen.)