Wednesday 26 March 2008

Charging for driving lessons without being an ADI - It's illegal

For the guy who found my site yesterday while searching for this - it's illegal.

Unless you are a PDI (someone most of the way through the exams to become an ADI and registered as such with the DSA) then teaching anyone to drive a car under any circumstances (on or off road, full license holder or provisional) for money (or money's worth) is illegal.

There's quite a few companies doing this under the guise of track training, car control training, even some of the fleet guys use people who aren't ADIs to do this.

The fact is, it's still illegal.

There's even government approved training providers who do this and large organisations who advocate this.

But it is illegal.

I've even been on courses which practically sanction this and train us to train "assessors". If they assess then that's fine, but as soon as they offer any kind of solution to a fault recognised by the assessment then......

.....it's illegal.

Sunday 23 March 2008

Complaints about the Instructor Colleges

This is a bit of an odd one - I tend to keep an eye on which searches lead people to me and in recent weeks this one has started turning up higher and higher.

It leads initially to a post about how to complain about a driving instructor (geared towards learners), so I thought I'd better address the issue itself.

As I've mentioned before on several occasions, I'm not a keen fan of The Instructor College - the one who are affiliated with Red Driving School and who insist on telling everyone out there that our job is really easy and that we're raking it in.

I get annoyed with them, because they mean that everyone feels that they can ask for a discount (one reason I don't do learners any more) and everyone else wants to become an instructor because they've been told that there's a "shortage" of instructors (ask any instructor if there's a shortage!!!!).

However, just to re-iterate previous posts again - there is nothing wrong with the way that they work - they're a company.

The claims they advertise are substantiated and I can happily tell you that yes - it is possible to earn £30k a year as a driving instructor.

I'll also tell anyone who wants to listen that if you shelled out to the instructor college without doing the research with regards to what you are going to get - then you're a fool! And in the modern market economy we all know that the fool and his money are easily parted.

A couple of pointers - ask how much training you will get - and get it in writing.

Ask what ratio this training will be - 2 trainees to 1 trainer? 1:1? Or will half of it be classroom training at 20:1?

Then ask yourself how many hours training you are getting?

50 hours at 2:1 = 25 hours.

14 hours at 20:1 = 1.5 hours.

So you are getting 26.5 hours for your £3k+?!!!!!

This means that you may find yourself paying over £100/hour for your training.

Hell........
...................even I don't charge that much!!!!!!!!

Saturday 22 March 2008

The price of fuel

There's a lot of whingeing going on at the moment about the price of fuel.

Regular readers will recognise one of my personal annoyances here (see: http://undercoveradi.blogspot.com/2007/02/road-pricing-for-driving-instructors.html for a previous rant) and feel free to switch off, log out and pretend that the subject doesn't exist and that those of us who actually agree with the tax increase on fuel must be either mad, bad or dangerous.

The fact is - no government will raise the price of driving unless they REALLY NEED TO. It loses votes - hell, IT LOSES LOTS OF VOTES.

So why are they doing it?

Because they f&*%ing NEED to!

Despite the constant whingeing - foolish fat people continue to buy bigger and greedier cars (try buying a car that does what you need it to and nothing more - the price of your fuel will drop by 15-30%) and they also continue to use them for journeys for which they are completely unnecessary (try walking you lazy t*@t - your fuel figures will drop by 100% for each of these journeys).

These guys are the same people who drive aggressively and waste fuel (try going on an eco-driving course guys - the price of fuel will drop by 10-20% for frick's sake). They also complain that speed bumps ruin their suspension while driving past schools at 25 mph (slow down you w@n&£r and you might find that not only are your maintenance bills lower, but for some reason small dead children no longer need to be removed from your wheel arches and radiator grill).

They're also the same people who feel that the delightful flourescent charity boxes they mount on poles in areas where road risk has been assessed to be higher than normal should be removed. They also feel that these same charity boxes are only designed for raising revenue ('duh - yeah!!!) and have no effect on road safety (who cares? - they really are quite simple - go past them without contributing - like you do outside the supermarket at Christmas - you've had enough practice at it haven't you?).

The simple fact is that driving can be affordable to those who need to drive and use their brains to work out what the best way of doing it is.

For those who are selfish, greedy or ignorant it's getting more expensive - hu-f*<&ing-rah!!!