adiNEWS is a monthly magazine for driving instructors, delivering industry News, Reviews, CPD, Fleet, Road Safety and Driver Training Advice and Features to the Driving Instructor Industry straight to your door. To find out what’s going on inside adiNEWS this month, click here...
January, not the most auspicious month, or one to set the imagination on fire and fill us all with the warm glow of great expectations. But let’s not dwell too much in the Dickensian half-light, donning those smoggy tinted glasses of Victoriana nostalgia for fear of creating a truly bleak house for us all to get trapped in. What this month does provide us with is the chance to start afresh, with new targets and revitalised ambition. After all, it’s a New Year, and you have all those New Year’s resolutions to....
Okay, it is perhaps the darkest of all months in the year; a hangover from all that festive fun, alongside short, cold, icy, rainy, probably windy as well, days. And whilst we can normally look forward to the seasons improving and planning those summer holidays, the current economic turmoil has set most of the population wishing they could just be in hibernation. But stop right there. The year has only just begun, the doom and gloom was last year, and we certainly wallowed in it and really should have acclimatised by now. Although there certainly isn’t going to be some sudden atmospheric change, there are no long-term forecasts for a particularly warming environment, well not economically, but it’s time to move on and be positive – it’s the law of consequences that for every negative, there has to be a positive, so make sure the mercury is rising in your favour.
Seriously, the world keeps spinning and life goes on in much the same manner as it always has, and we, as professionals in an important social industry, have plenty of exciting challenges to grapple with. If our Minister is to be believed, then long awaited changes are beginning to be marked on the cards, and this may just be the start. On top of that, the recent Strategic Review and budget changes are likely to see new challenges for road safety, and possibly an even greater role and responsibility for driving instructors – let’s just hope that with it comes a greater respect for the work we do and its value to a safer and more cohesive society, and that we can meet that responsibility with some aplomb.
The world is constantly evolving, as is everything in our lives. Nothing stands still, but sometimes it is easy to become complacent about what we do until, that is, something or someone comes along to shake everything up a little. Whilst this can be a shock, quite scary and unsettling at first, it can often turn out to be the best thing that could ever happen. As one door closes, another usually opens and, before you know it, you are in the driving seat of a different motor and heading for another exciting destination.
However, it is important that we don’t lose sight of the professional standards and expectations we strive to achieve. It seems easy to forget, or to leave it for someone else to pursue, especially when we are being pulled and pushed in all directions by the storms of austerity.
So, while January may not appear, on the face of it, to be the most exciting month, and 2012 the year with the greatest prospects, life is mysterious and you never really know what’s around the corner. But in true safe driving wisdom, you should always be prepared, drive appropriately for the conditions whilst making good progress, yet be capable of taking avoiding action within the distance you can see ahead of you. To reach your chosen destination, you have to travel there and, whilst the journey may sometimes be challenging, it’s usually what makes it all worthwhile.
Okay, it is perhaps the darkest of all months in the year; a hangover from all that festive fun, alongside short, cold, icy, rainy, probably windy as well, days. And whilst we can normally look forward to the seasons improving and planning those summer holidays, the current economic turmoil has set most of the population wishing they could just be in hibernation. But stop right there. The year has only just begun, the doom and gloom was last year, and we certainly wallowed in it and really should have acclimatised by now. Although there certainly isn’t going to be some sudden atmospheric change, there are no long-term forecasts for a particularly warming environment, well not economically, but it’s time to move on and be positive – it’s the law of consequences that for every negative, there has to be a positive, so make sure the mercury is rising in your favour.
Seriously, the world keeps spinning and life goes on in much the same manner as it always has, and we, as professionals in an important social industry, have plenty of exciting challenges to grapple with. If our Minister is to be believed, then long awaited changes are beginning to be marked on the cards, and this may just be the start. On top of that, the recent Strategic Review and budget changes are likely to see new challenges for road safety, and possibly an even greater role and responsibility for driving instructors – let’s just hope that with it comes a greater respect for the work we do and its value to a safer and more cohesive society, and that we can meet that responsibility with some aplomb.
The world is constantly evolving, as is everything in our lives. Nothing stands still, but sometimes it is easy to become complacent about what we do until, that is, something or someone comes along to shake everything up a little. Whilst this can be a shock, quite scary and unsettling at first, it can often turn out to be the best thing that could ever happen. As one door closes, another usually opens and, before you know it, you are in the driving seat of a different motor and heading for another exciting destination.
However, it is important that we don’t lose sight of the professional standards and expectations we strive to achieve. It seems easy to forget, or to leave it for someone else to pursue, especially when we are being pulled and pushed in all directions by the storms of austerity.
So, while January may not appear, on the face of it, to be the most exciting month, and 2012 the year with the greatest prospects, life is mysterious and you never really know what’s around the corner. But in true safe driving wisdom, you should always be prepared, drive appropriately for the conditions whilst making good progress, yet be capable of taking avoiding action within the distance you can see ahead of you. To reach your chosen destination, you have to travel there and, whilst the journey may sometimes be challenging, it’s usually what makes it all worthwhile.
