Be careful how you spend your redundancy money!

FRIDAY 27 FEBRUARY 2009

Unemployed? Good redundancy package? Want to make loads of money?
Easy – don’t even think about becoming an ADI!

The driver training industry is about to be flooded with weak, newly qualified, and badly trained instructors, according to Professor Peter Russell, Director of DERF, the Driver Education Research Foundation.

Professor Russell is warning the new Secretary of State for Transport, Geoffrey Hoon, that plans currently being developed by the Driving Standards Agency to control the spurious claims and poor recruitment strategies of some instructor training firms will be too late to save the industry from a glut of under-trained instructors.

When British Steel closed down its mills in the town of Corby, Northamptonshire in the early 1980s, many hundreds of redundant workers – seduced by national advertising campaigns telling them how much money they could earn as self-employed driving instructors – spent their redundancy packages on ADI training courses.

Then, as soon as they qualified for a trainee driving instructor’s licence, they charged their eager clients less than half the price of the existing instructors in the area.

The result of this became known as the ‘Corby Effect’. Even though fewer than 27% of these new trainees eventually qualified as Approved Driving Instructors (ADIs), in the six months or so that they were offering cheap training, hundreds of fully qualified ADIs lost clients and faced unemployment themselves – except, in their cases, there was no redundancy package to fall back on.

And according to Professor Russell, it is happening again, only this time on a much greater scale.

A fully qualified driving instructor has to pass three tests: a theory test, a driving test, and a test of ability to instruct. Having passed the first two, a partly qualified instructor (PDI) is allowed to give driving lessons for six months. After that, the instructor must pass the third test to be allowed to continue teaching people to drive. Would-be instructors are allowed three attempts to pass the third part, and if they fail they have to wait two years before they can begin at Part 1 again.

There is now a proliferation of national press and television advertising encouraging the unemployed to take instructor training at a cost of up to £4,000 a time. The advertising is straightforward: no previous experience is needed and earnings of £30,000 per year, plus a free car and a guaranteed supply of clients, are there for the asking.

No one mentions that statistically over half of them will fail the theory test, lose their training fees and be back on the scrap heap. No one mentions that 60% of the survivors will fail to pass their advanced driving test to qualify for the trainee instructors’ licence needed before they can begin to earn any money at all. No one mentions that more than 70% of those who gain trainee licences will fail to pass their instructional test.

And, if they are in an area that already has enough instructors to meet the local need (there are 44,000 ADIs nationwide, and half as many again partly-trained instructors), even those who succeed in qualifying by passing all three ADI tests may struggle to earn a reasonable wage, after paying their franchise fee, and/or motoring costs, plus all their business administration costs.

The Corby Effect led to chaos in the industry. If the selection, recruitment and training processes of new instructors are not changed soon, the results could well be catastrophic – and at the very time that the Department for Transport, with its commitment to road safety, is making plans to make the driving test more difficult.

Motorists to drive on hard shoulders

MONDAY 9 FEBRUARY 2009

Motorists will drive on hard shoulders after ministers scrapped plans to widen the overcrowded motorway network. An extra lane was to be added to 220 miles of motorways but it was decided it would cost too much.

Long sections of the M6 the M1 the M62 and the M25 will now have ‘hard shoulder running’. It is proposed that this will happen at peak times to relieve congestion. Traffic flow will be monitored by CCTV with maximum speed limits of 62 mph; speed limits will be reduced if necessary. In case of breakdown or other problems there will be ‘emergency refuge areas’ set up every 800 yards.

Road safety group Brake said they have serious concerns about using the hard shoulder as it is used by emergency vehicles to get to the scene of an accident as quickly as possible without endangering other vehicles. The AA have similar concerns and also added that hard shoulder running only addresses short term congestion and it is really road widening on the cheap.

Plans to widen the overcrowded motorway network were scrapped recently in favour of allowing motorists to use the hard shoulder. 220 miles of motorways were to get an extra lane added but it was decided by ministers that it would cost too much.

Long sections of the M6 the M1 the M62 and the M25 will now have ‘hard shoulder running’. To relieve congestion traffic flow will be monitored by CCTV at peak times with maximum speed limits of 62 mph; speed limits will be reduced if necessary. In the case of a breakdown or other problems there will be ‘emergency refuge areas’ set up every 800 yards.

Road safety group Brake raised serious concerns about using the hard shoulder as it is used by emergency vehicles to get to the scene of an accident as quickly as possible. The AA have similar concerns and also added that hard shoulder running only addresses short term congestion and it is really road widening on the cheap.