UK.gov mulls three-point turn on three-point turn thanks to satnav. Weeeeeeee. THUD Britain's wannabe motorists could soon face a new driving test after the UK government confirmed plans to scrap the "turn in the road" manoeuvre and bring in satnav directions for candidates to follow instead. The irritating "reverse around the corner" manoeuvre could also become a thing of the past, with the practical exam …
The 'Three point turn' demonstrates use of gears, clutch, accelerator, together with observation and judgment. Successful completion demonstrates a reasonable level of competence by the driver.
I suspect the reason for the proposal to remove it from the test is the problem of finding a safe stretch of road to perform the maneuver on due to the increasing number of on-road parked cars.
I stopped driving several year ago because it is stupid expensive for short distances and cycling keeps me fitter, but I renew driving license for those times when I do need to drive, so would object to a retest every 10 years. Satnavs should not be relied upon, because either they can fail or cause problems e.g. cars in rivers, one way streets or dead ends, or large vehicles on too narrow roads, too tight turns, or roads with too low bridges etc.!
I cycle along some residential roads with cars parked on the side of the road on hills, typically on random alternate sides with low winter sun, and pity large vehicle drivers and opposing drivers for those stretches; I regularly see poor driving manners, so divert to tarmac 'foot' path when I see a possible dicey situation ahead with an oncoming vehicle; cars don't have that option!... Maybe drivers should be trained/tested on special courses like this with junk dummy cars along them (to avoid some steep compensation claims) with low winter sun or a powerful spotlight in front. Ironically dicey routes like this can be where a Three point turn and reverse turning can be quite useful to know how to do, without damaging stuff or getting confused, and help with more awkward parking.
And that is precisely why the use of them should be part of the test. If you end up blindly following the satnav without any thought to where "Turn Left!" is going to send you, then you should fail.
Disclaimer: I do use a Satnav on some journeys, though it is a family game to yell "No!" at the Satnav when we decide that isn't the way we are going - which is more often than not.
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What gets me - having just had a quick drive into town - is this idea that the reversing-around-a-corner manoeuvre is somehow useless as well. have any of these people ever tried pulling a car out of a parking spot? Or reversing into one for that matter. Reversing out of a driveway?
I get the feeling whatever committee thought up this pile of rubbish consists of lazy sods who get driven everywhere and probably haven't been behind the wheel for years.
"have any of these people ever tried pulling a car out of a parking spot? Or reversing into one for that matter. Reversing out of a driveway?"
Absolutely - one of the entire points of reversing around a corner is to test your manoeuvring skills in tight spaces.
Get rid of 3-point turns and reversing round corners, and you've lost the ability to turn your car around when necessary. Such as dead ends. Or car parks as mentioned.
"Get rid of 3-point turns and reversing round corners, and you've lost the ability to turn your car around when necessary. Such as dead ends. Or car parks as mentioned."
Too late, they've already lost that ability.
To compensate, they make the idiots follow blind directions from their satnavs and follow the long way around. Until, as you say, you get to a dead end or car park.
At least the drivers who a are least able to drive will congregate at predictable known locations, like dead ends and car parks.
Reverse INTO the b***d* thing
I used to live on a relatively main road.
At time of getting home from work, finding a large enough gap in the traffic to perform a reverse onto the driveway exercise was impossible, whereas reversing out in the mornings was relatively simple.
Driving on also made accessing the car boot a possibility. Useful when taking stuff out, or putting it in.
Watching learners following satnav instructions has got to be award winning TV. The amount of times my satnav has told me to do a three point turn because it's driven me up a dead end/into a canal/ up a railway track is beyond measure. Not training learners how to turn around after their satnav has driven them into pedestrian precinct or whatever has got to be pure TV gold.
Yeah - most folks round here seem to have 'em. Its qiute clever really - all 4 flash at once. The meaning seems to be "I'm about to do something utterly daft and highly dangerous - and I'm determined to give you no useful clue as to what it is - JUST GET OUT OF MY **£**)(*$**!! WAY"
Bit like systemd really.
The navigation system in my car is a large spiral bound GB road atlas. They are very cheap (about £2) and available at many shops and petrol stations. The disadvantages of my system are that it requires me to be able to think and remember stuff but I don't seem to have a problem with that.
Paper map books never run out of battery, instant boot-up, larger screen, can survive being thrown from car window at speed, no screen glare, easy to update (biro\pencil), don't get nicked.
The best part of map books is you get to see the whole route from A to B before you set out. Letting you then pick the nicer back roads option. Or use your own brain to avoid the traffic past the football stadium.
So if the new driving test includes a SatNav section, does this mean every new learner driver will have to buy a sat nav? Do I assume this idea was brought in by TomTom to help their flagging sales?
Have to agree here, I have a sat-nav for use with the bike but use it mainly as a map. You try reading a map in the pouring rain with bike gloves on!
Long gone now are the days where I'd write out a route, stick it in a plastic bag and tape it to the tank. But follow the sat-nav's instructions? All very well, but not much fun when it sends you up a track in the Italian Dolomites that it thinks is an auto-strada but hasn't yet been built!
I learned to distrust computer navigation a long time ago. I was playing with a copy of Autoroute, asking it for routes to places I'd been, so I could see how it compared with my choices. One of those was Southend, which apparently is in Scotland. Southend-on-Sea is the one in Essex. Ever since then, whenever I've needed to follow directions from Satnav, I've always checked them in advance on a map to make sure I agree with them. Mostly I print out an overview map and a local street map courtesy of Google and do the rest from memory. That works unless there's an unexpected event such as a traffic accident that forces me to divert from my memorised route.
"I learned to distrust computer navigation a long time ago."
What you've learned to hate, is auto routing, not computer navigation.
I've been using "satnav" from before the term was even coined. I've never had auto routing, and don't miss it. That alone is an infinite improvement over paper maps held by one hand, while blindly driving though give way (yield) and stop signs because I was too busy focusing on a tiny spot on a map to see them.
Ye' olde' argument that paper maps are more reliable than electonics doesn't hold any more. If I'm driving anywhere, I have two, one dedicated unit, another via software on my phone. With backups that you can store in your pockets or belts (can't do that with books), any reliability concerns are easily dismissed.
Fast forward when the rest of the world has caught up, I'm near mortified that people are blindly following auto routing directions, and go so far as saying "their" version of maps is fully up-to-date and never ever wrong. Ever.
This is partially the fault of the data, but mostly the fault of the idiots who turn off their brains.
I would generally agree though I recently ran into a situation where the map did not reflect the actual layout and road signs did not help. It took everyone in the car a good number of aborted retries to figure out which route we should be taking . Luckily I knew how to do turning manoeuvres so it wasn't really a problem but a SatNav would have been helpful as a 'here's where you are' and a 'that way' aid. Though pedestrians are often equally good for that there were none around.
"The navigation system in my car is a large spiral bound GB road atlas. They are very cheap (about £2) and available at many shops and petrol stations. The disadvantages of my system are that it requires me to be able to think and remember stuff but I don't seem to have a problem with that."
And do you read it while driving, to find a new route when the road in front of you is closed?
I do 3 point turns several times a day!
Personally, I think the government would improve road safety if they introduced mandatory retesting every 10 years for every driver. Wouldn't necessarily need to be as comprehensive (or as expensive) as the regular new driver test, but could highlight drivers with bad habits that could do with extra lessons. The quality of driving on the roads at the moment is terrible - last week I drove past 3 separate crashes in one 20 mile journey!
I do several 3 point turns a day too - generally in turning in our yard. Got some of them sensors that tells me when I'm going to hit something reversing which seems really cool until you get into the service replacement car from the garage which hasnt got them and reverse over the cat.
Given the way that Satnav sends you the wrong way I feel a three point turn is ever more important. I admit to not having a Satnav. The last time I travelled with three other Satnav equipped cars they all went the wrong way until we were further away from where we were going than we had been at the start! It sent them East when the destination was to the West so something quite trivial.
I have lost count of the number of cars which come to my cottage courtesy of a sat nav. The best recently being a massive truck towing an electricity company's 'comfort station' which had a kitchen, a rest area and a toilet.
The driver was less than pleased with me that the real life topography of me, my cottage at the end of a long steep and narrow lane didn't match his satnav's false sense of reality.
Mind you, not as much fun as my mate in the petrol station had recently. He watched the vice police commissioner being driven up a footpath up the local hill because the pratnav gave the wrong directions to the Mountain Rescue depot. Apparantly cue much crashing about in the woods on the hillside in the mud with a large drop on one side for ages until the car emerged looking somewhat worse for wear before then going up the correct track.
I hope we don't need to rely on Plod to arrive in an emergency.
I think before the Test is altered the standard of instruction needs a serious looking at. I have seen instructors stop their pupils in the most ridiculous places to "chat". No wonder they behave like muppets when they actually pass the test - they have been given bad habits by their tutors!
I note that now it seems reversing around a corner is allowed downhill (coasting), whereas I had to perform that maneuver on level ground/uphill to demonstrate appropriate throttle and clutch use.
Who are the idiots who think that Slavishly following a Sat Nav is more important than being able to make basic maneuvers safely and competently. I am reminded of a woman who turned into a side street on her right - across the path of a friend who was proceeding along a road from the opposite direction. Despite hard braking and a swerve they collided, when he got out of the car she asked him "didn't you see me indicating?". There are far too many on the road like her already, without this "improvement" lowering the standard still further. The fact that it is supported by the Instructors body suggests they are looking to improve their pass rates by dumbing the test down, what next? demonstrating an ability to change a CD while driving at speed on a trunk road?
An interesting point, how often do instructors have to renew their skills/licence in teaching to allow for changes in current driving conditions.
In fact what are the requirements now to be an instructor?
As for indicators and hazard lights, they drive me crazy.
Hazard lights apparently mean if you switch them on while you are still driving, you can stop where and when you like without any further signalling and even if it's in an inconvenient place for other traffic but its OK because your hazards are on.
Of course indicators are definitely for saying I have just turned this corner or I have just exited this roundabout.
Whatever happened to " Mirror, Signal, Manoeuvre" in the teaching?
1) how to turn the bloody thing off
Do this and you have passed.
My former next door neighbour used to set her satnav for a trip to the local Tesco's. Less than one mile and you had to pass the bloody place to get off the housing development. She got all snotty when I asked wht she did that. Her excuse was that she needed to know if there were any traffic holdups. you could just about see the place from her bedroom window.
Pass me the GPS Jammer please.{only joking M'lord}
Perhaps they should have a simulator based test first.
One advantage of a simulator test is that it would be easier to control, give everyone the same test and not give you testers who say things like "turn left there" just as you go past the road.
The disadvantage of a simulator based test would that it wouldn't be anything like actually driving a car.
"Im suprised no one suggested doing all the training and the test on a simulator yet to further cut the risk of learner drivers on the road to other road users, oh and reduce congestion of course."
Going on the standard of today's drivers, the simulator is the ONLY place I'd be comfortable having them.
"We are carrying out initial research to explore how the driving test could better reflect real-life driving,"
I look forward to watching candidates perform the "Enter the roundabout at 40mph without looking, cut up on the inside of the car already on the roundabout and exit in front of them, having caused them to slam on their brakes" manoeuvre. Should be fun.
Yeah - and I'm looking forward to the Slow down to a crawl because you can see a roundabout 200 meters ahead, then stop when you reach the roundabout despite there being no cars in sight, wait a bit longer just to be sure a car won't hove into view in the distance, then have a final moment of hesitation before finally proceeding onto the roundabout, being sure to cut across the inner lane where the frustrated chap who's been stuck behind your dawdling ass for miles was about to take the opportunity to get past you manoeuvre. (BTW - it's perfectly legal to pass someone on the inside of a roundabout if the exit of the roundabout has two lanes).
Also, I'm looking forward to the Looking at the empty road ahead of you wondering why people complain about traffic congestion, whilst remaining utterly ignorant of the two mile tailback following in your wake manoeuvre.
Can't wait for self-driving cars - it will come to the highways first...
Imagine how much life would be saved?
Imagine the freedom for people who cannot drive?
Imagine the transport of goods regardless of the day of the week (yes,I have a package sitting in a depot that I cannot access until Monday because the system is setup that way...).
Imagine not needing to own a car?
Yesterday's dreams are tomorrows reality.
And the beer icon...obviously...!
P.
"We are carrying out initial research to explore how the driving test could better reflect real-life driving"
When I say proceed, take your sandwich out of its wrapper and proceed to nibble while over taking that slow moving lorry. Taking care not drop any filling on the upholstery.
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