Dear dvsa,

Many thanks for all the recent emails, I appreciate the effort that you have been putting in to keeping us ADIs up to date.  I should like to discuss with you a few of the points that you have raised.

"It is all our fault (the ADI) that the booking system is in chaos and our fault that candidates are not turning up for test". 

Your booking system and the lost appointments.

May I remind you that it is your booking system and you have the keys to the lock to control how it works.  If you were to take control of it and not allow any Tom Dick or Harry with the skills to create an app that can scour it for, and book up tests, at lightening speed maybe us mere ADIs could get a look in at booking our pupils in.  We are receiving enquiries from customers from a hundred plus miles away that have used these apps and are willing to travel just to take a test. When they cannot find a local ADI to take them on, the appointment goes down the toilet and it is lost. This is nothing to do with us, it is your system and your contract with the candidate and your fault. 

Because of the delays and the anarchy in the booking system pupils are going on line and getting tests at short notice, then advising their instructor. We have to politely advise them that after only a handful of lessons they are not ready and not using our car, no matter what mum and dad may think. Don't you dare blame us when they then turn up unprepared at the Dtc and scare the big poo out of your poor examiners. Unlike the good old days when we could tip off our colleagues at the Dtc what to expect, we now have the GDPR in place which prevents us from saying a thing. The contract is between you and the candidate and has nothing to do with us, as you so loved to point out to us when it was convenient to you.  It is you that is putting your frontline staff at a higher risk of danger and wasting test appointments, not us the ADI. 

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Publish the ADI pass rates so the public can see what they are getting.

Will you be qualifying the figures you produce as not all ADIs get the cream of the pupils.  Will you be saying which ADIs take on another ADIs rejects who failed their first 2 tests and the ADI does not want to get a poor pass rate and in fear of a 'special' Standards Check dropped on them, probably not? Or the ADIs  who work in a poorer area with a lower social group who struggle to find the money to afford the cost of the lessons, probably not? How about the ADIs who work so hard for their pupils with learning difficulties, nervous or anxiety concerns, probably not?  Does that seem fair to you, don't you think that if you are going to publish data it should be validated and qualified to stand up to scrutiny, highly unlikely?

Will you publish individual examiner pass rates to create a level playing field, I doubt it?  How about having a customer reviews publication for your individual examiners so that candidates can rate their examiners on  performance, customer service and communications skills, again I doubt it?

These are all the things that the ADI does every lesson, every day to stay in business and attract new business to survive, are you afraid of what may come up?  Wouldn't this be a real customer focussed gesture, just as every other business puts its soul on the line by inviting the public to submit customer reviews and live, or die on their feedback.  Just imagine if your customers could chose their examiner on the customer reviews they receive or even as in our last blog had a right to complain with evidence to back it up.

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The recent ADI survey.

After extending the closure date you managed to get almost 6,500 responses out of nearly 40,000 ADIs. Congratulations, that is a big improvement.

 You were delighted at the response rate and yet ADIs out here think it is poor response. Do you not wonder why the response is so low from a group who are desperate for change?  The answer is simple.  From past experience the ADI does not believe that you listen to them, do not pay any attention to the responses' you receive, or even care about what he/she thinks,  so they believe it is a waste of time and effort.  This I am afraid is your fault as well.  If you do not listen to your customers then they stop listening to you, not exactly rocket science.  If Tesco, Aldi, Lidl, even Selfridges and Harrods can do it, why is it beyond you guys?

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Latest changes to the Highway Code.

This item has caused considerable concern in the road safety community and not just among ADIs.  Whilst most of us can say that's OK, we were teaching it anyway, there is one particular item of concern that stands out, and it is the creation of a virtual zebra crossing at the mouth of a junction - minor to major (& vice-versa for pedants) road. 

As it was, the pedestrian would wait and watch for traffic before stepping out into the clear road space, not for any particular reason other than for simple life preservation. This is taught in schools, by parents and grandparents for generations, older siblings etc. Watch - Look - Listen has been drummed into us for decades. Now suddenly we have had celebrities saying the pedestrian has Right of Way and cars must stop. Where have you been, where is the publicity campaign on this?  Why no TV appearances, or educational videos that we can refer to???  Many ADIs have written to you asking for clarity and guidance and the replies seem less than clear, or questionable at best.

Environment

You are allegedly big on the environment. We now have the situation whereby in January a car may have paused momentarily as a courtesy for an elderly pedestrian, a child, a mum with a buggy etc and then driven on. This may have happened a thousand, or two times a day across the country. Now we have every car, van, lorry, bus, tractor needing to stop according to the information we are seeing whenever a pedestrian who is walking along the pavement reaches a side road and wants to proceed directly across to the other side.  This will mean, instead of a few thousand courteous drivers stopping to help out, 20million+ vehicles coming to a stop several times, every single hour of every day and starting off again in a base gear, therefore creating thousands of tonnes of additional pollution.  This is most definitely not our fault either. It is yours, and all the thousands, or millions of tonnes of additional pollution created by this thinking right up until the whole country goes electric. Add to this the young pedestrian who may hear of this change and try to put it into practice, after decades of prior conditioning, and misjudge the vehicle speed, will you take responsibility for the ensuing incident?

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Retraining in cognitive thinking for guide dogs

Still with the Highway Code, did you not think of the guide dogs out there who are trained to wait for a clear road before leading their owner across. These incredible animals are highly trained to stop and wait for a clear space before crossing the road, are you now expecting them to decide if the driver is waiting for them to cross and make the decision that it is safe to do so? Are you now really expecting that level of cognitive thinking from a dog?

Congratulations on your lack of foresight!

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Grumblers email address

There is now an email address for the Grumbler....  thegrumbler@theaadi.co.uk     so you can drop a line if you have a question you'd like to ask, or a story/information to provide/pass on (in total confidence of course so dvsa employees need not worry). Trolls will of course be ignored and deleted by my pet Ork.

As usual, if there is anything that you see is incorrect or, plain wrong, I apologise, and if you drop a line via the Contact Us page it will be edited.