The Importance of Blind Spot Checks & Teaching Thinking Drivers for Safer Roads

Hi, my intention of this article is to explain a commonly misinterpreted subject, which is how driving faults are marked on a driving test. I wanted to explain a commonly occurring misconception where pupils, PDIs and ADIs think examiners are inconsistent with their marking.

It’s very difficult to teach assessment via a document, but I will try my best to explain.

Driving examiners use a system called deviation from desired outcome and follow the DT1, which is guidance on how to conduct driving tests. See link at the bottom. The examiner watches for differences or deviations of what they would do and compares that to what a pupil does whilst driving. This deviation is then fault weighted and placed into five different categories. These categories are either no fault, non-note-worthy fault, driver error, serious driver error or dangerous driver error.

Now, this is the interesting bit, if a pupil doesn’t do something in accordance with either the Highway Code, Driving the Essential Skills, the national driver or rider standard then the fault is not always marked by the examiner. Shock horror you may say, all faults or deviations should be marked, however this is related to the level of risk they cause to themselves, other roads users or static objects like traffic bollards and walls etc.

Let’s take a couple of examples to explain,

Example one, a pupil is on a driving test in a parked position and is asked to move off whilst parked on a very quiet rural road, these are no roads or driveways in their blind spot and when after being asked to move off when safe they don’t check their blind spot, but do look in the relevant mirrors. Well what risk have they caused? Well, none, is the answer.

Now, let’s look at another example, when a pupil is moving off from a road which is in a very busy town centre, before moving off the pupil doesn’t check the blind spot. However, this time, a cyclist is directly alongside them, and the pupil’s car is just about to collide with the cyclist. Well, the examiner would dual control them, assuming a dual control brake is fitted and mark the fault as a dangerous error.

Also, it must be noted that habitual driver errors would also eventually become a serious fault.

With serious faults there doesn’t have to be another road user present and if there is ‘actual’ danger the fault becomes dangerous.

When an examiner fault weights, they assess against three different criteria: does it have any affect on vehicle control, did it affect their safety, or did it breach the law?

However, does this make a difference to the way we teach our students to drive. Well in a way yes. One of the competencies on the SC/P3, says, ”Was the pupil encouraged to analyse problems and take responsibility for their learning”.

A part of this means, are you getting your pupils to think for themselves and helping them to weigh up the risk by doing something or by not doing something in different situations. Our industry should be producing thinking drivers, not drivers who just drive a certain way to pass a driving test with a minimum amount of driving lessons and learn by rote.

Rote learning is where you continuously repeat the same thing, but without understanding why you are doing it a certain way. However, some things are learned quite well through rote, namely vehicle controls, but the driving environment is different all the time and drivers should be able to learn through experience, however that’s a different article.

This is the link to DT1- https://www.gov.uk/guidance/guidance-for-driving-examiners-carrying-out-driving-tests-dt1