South Meath Driving School

Sara phoned me for driving lessons about two years ago. She was aged about 18 and a beginner. She completed five one-hour lessons and she told me that she would be in touch when she got in some practice and that she was in College.

Then, recently, Sara contacted me to tell me her Driving Test was due in a few weeks, so, she required some fine tuning. It was immediately obvious that the practice she had done, meanwhile, had brought her up to a high standard. She was now driving her own car.

The final chapter of preparation commenced –

Rules and checks; position vehicle correctly and in good time; comply with traffic controls; turnabout competently.

The Driving Test Report Form displays the list from A to Z. There’s some 99 competencies outlined in which a candidate must perform to a satisfactory degree. While I emphasise to all who come my way that the learning process is not just for the purpose of passing any particular examination, rather that it’s about achieving a high standard of driving and safety. Parallel to all that is the desire to just PASS! I could assess before her test that Sara should pass with room to spare. So she did, albeit with a few Grade 2 marks.

She was very happy with the outcome and so was I. She set off to drive to Trim and I accompanied her. I talked to her about complacency that can set in when one passes the test and how research shows that about 10% of those who have passed are involved in a crash within one year. We also talked about driving on a motorway, the rules and dangers involved. Sara was driving safely and confidently within the 80kph and all was well.

She passed Bective junction and on towards the new GAA grounds at Dunganny. For about two hundred metres distance at the entrance to this facility, there’s a clearly marked hatched area (in the centre of the road) with a centre lane to turn in to the right. There were two vehicles in front of us. Then a car that was following behind us indicated right and powered through the complete hatched area. Luckily, there was no traffic approaching, because that overtaking driver was quickly running out of space and would have difficulty getting back into the left lane. Sara raised an eyebrow and said nothing. Almost immediately, another car overtook us in a similar manner straight through that prohibited area. But, this driver hadn’t the same luck as the first. A car approached from Trim quickly curtailing this lunatic driver’s space but the latter continued on and squeezed in, in front of a car that was being overtaken, almost making contact with the right wing and forcing this other driver to pull back and make space. The car driver approaching from Trim also slowed, thus avoiding a head-on smash.

Just last week I was driving between Mullingar and Longford and observed a replica of the above scene in a hatched area.

A hatched area has continuous white lines of demarcation into which a driver should not enter. Some reckless drivers see it as a fleeting opportunity to overtake other vehicles that they deem to be going too slow, though they are driving up to the maximum speed limit.

Colum Kenny wrote an article in a Sunday newspaper recently criticising the Driving Test as ‘erratic’ and driving learner drivers ‘crazy.’ Well, the RSA has to represent a specific standard and when a candidate passes the given test, it’s not up to the people who conduct such tests to supervise or enforce what transpires afterwards. That’s the job of our law enforcers. Of course, I agree with Colum that the vast majority of adult drivers who have long passed their test wouldn’t pass such test if they were to undergo it tomorrow. I think that argument doesn’t hold much water: how many people who passed their Leaving Cert ten years ago would succeed next week if they were asked to repeat. The vast majority of adult drivers are very safe drivers despite the fact that they might not get all the technicalities correct as required in a test, like stopping position or peeking in the rear view mirror regularly. The point that I am making about the likes of those two drivers above who recklessly overtook as stated is that they have an attitude that must be changed. It’s an attitude about many things related to road safety, like keeping the speed limit, abiding by traffic signs such as those road markings or not ‘jumping’ amber lights, let alone red lights. Those two potential killers saw Sara’s ‘L’ plate and adopted the attitude that such drivers are a hazard and only slow them down. They didn’t take cognisance of Sara’s high standard of driving, that she was keeping all the regulations, even though she was a fully qualified driver about to burn her L-Plates.

The time has come when we all must self analyse our habits and our attitudes. So far this year, the number of people killed on our roads is ten more than the same time last year. All the white vans in Ireland with speed detectors won’t save us from calamity if we go out with a frame of mind like the two crackpots at Dunganny, who were most likely the holders of full licences.

As far as Sara was concerned, I must say that after all the coaching,  guidance and adherence to the rules and regulations, I felt a bit despondent, badly let down by the actions of two hoodlums.