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...
February, the month of love, though little Cupid seems to be firing a few blanks at the moment. Still, January’s over and we are teetering closer to spring, summer, Christmas – well, you pick which one you are hoping to leap toward with greater gusto.
It would be easy to dwell on the difficulties we are all facing, after all it gets enough mentions in the pages of editorial copy, blogs and forums, and I think I’ve probably given it a mention too. But don’t let that stop me.
Whilst we do seem to be going though some sort of flashback to the ‘80s, what with the rejuvenation of Thatcher in the movies, popular keyboard sound effects on the airwaves and some interesting shoulder padded power dressing fashions on the catwalks, it does make you think how far we have come since those heady days of donkey jackets, spandex, Stock, Aitken & Waterman and XR3s. Society has moved on apace, largely fuelled not by the dirty black stuff from the industrial North, but by the clean power of Pacman, silicon valley and the internet (okay, there’s plenty that’s not so clean, though I’m reliably informed that the government is working on blocking those sorts of sites!).
For our industry and the whole world of road safety, it’s not just the cars that have changed beyond imagination with their five star safety testing and numerous wizardry gizmos and electronics that keep us glued to the road rather than the bumper of the car in front, but it is also through the types of tools we use in-car, on lesson, to help train new drivers to be more aware, responsive and safer. Even the revolutionary magnetic boards with their dinky cars and playroom printed road markings have been replaced by the magic of iPads, laptops and animated lesson presenters, that provide a multitude of road and traffic scenarios at the touch of a button.
Now, when pupils reach test standard, there’s no playing the lottery waiting game of writing off for a test date, but instead you’re are driving a cursor around with a mouse and speeding through the electronic landscape of cyber space (though it is still quite easy to get lost, and success can still be something of a lottery) to an instant destination.
And then there’s the brave new world of running a driving school, marketing it and booking in those pupils. No longer is it a post card in the local shop window and a listing in the Yellow Pages, then waiting for a knock on the door from a parent up the road, a letter through the post box or a late evening call on the ‘rag and bone’. Now it’s remote secretary and diary booking services, emails and your own driving school website available 24hrs a day across the globe. And as for the tuition vehicle...
Yes, it’s all so much cleaner, brighter, simpler, efficient, effective, user friendly and modern (yes, maybe the HPT is struggling in the slow lane of technology), and you can’t knock the declining figures for road casualties.
So while you may be questioning the economic state of affairs and the hardships of running your business in the current climate, sometimes it’s good to look at the basics and consider what you have, rather than what you have not. After all, you could be chugging around in an Austin Maxi, freezing with the windows down to get rid of the condensation due to the lack of effective heater, let alone air con. The lack of town by-passes means you could be spending most of your time in choked up congestion, and car reliability means you spend the rest of the time by the side of the road or on a garage ramp. At the same time you’d probably be missing those landline phone calls from prospective pupils, and would certainly have no idea if a pupil needed to cancel at short notice. And when the pupils turn up to lessons they are likely to be ill prepared because they have no learning resources other than being in your car, where notes are written by hand on odd bits of paper that drift around the car at will. And so the list goes on.
Of course there is currently much to complain about in the life of the lone ADI, not least dreary depressing winter weather. But it is important to look at things from different perspectives, not just to navigate a more successful route looking at the road ahead, but also to study that rear view mirror and see what we have left behind – that in itself can be inspiring stuff.
It would be easy to dwell on the difficulties we are all facing, after all it gets enough mentions in the pages of editorial copy, blogs and forums, and I think I’ve probably given it a mention too. But don’t let that stop me.
Whilst we do seem to be going though some sort of flashback to the ‘80s, what with the rejuvenation of Thatcher in the movies, popular keyboard sound effects on the airwaves and some interesting shoulder padded power dressing fashions on the catwalks, it does make you think how far we have come since those heady days of donkey jackets, spandex, Stock, Aitken & Waterman and XR3s. Society has moved on apace, largely fuelled not by the dirty black stuff from the industrial North, but by the clean power of Pacman, silicon valley and the internet (okay, there’s plenty that’s not so clean, though I’m reliably informed that the government is working on blocking those sorts of sites!).
For our industry and the whole world of road safety, it’s not just the cars that have changed beyond imagination with their five star safety testing and numerous wizardry gizmos and electronics that keep us glued to the road rather than the bumper of the car in front, but it is also through the types of tools we use in-car, on lesson, to help train new drivers to be more aware, responsive and safer. Even the revolutionary magnetic boards with their dinky cars and playroom printed road markings have been replaced by the magic of iPads, laptops and animated lesson presenters, that provide a multitude of road and traffic scenarios at the touch of a button.
Now, when pupils reach test standard, there’s no playing the lottery waiting game of writing off for a test date, but instead you’re are driving a cursor around with a mouse and speeding through the electronic landscape of cyber space (though it is still quite easy to get lost, and success can still be something of a lottery) to an instant destination.
And then there’s the brave new world of running a driving school, marketing it and booking in those pupils. No longer is it a post card in the local shop window and a listing in the Yellow Pages, then waiting for a knock on the door from a parent up the road, a letter through the post box or a late evening call on the ‘rag and bone’. Now it’s remote secretary and diary booking services, emails and your own driving school website available 24hrs a day across the globe. And as for the tuition vehicle...
Yes, it’s all so much cleaner, brighter, simpler, efficient, effective, user friendly and modern (yes, maybe the HPT is struggling in the slow lane of technology), and you can’t knock the declining figures for road casualties.
So while you may be questioning the economic state of affairs and the hardships of running your business in the current climate, sometimes it’s good to look at the basics and consider what you have, rather than what you have not. After all, you could be chugging around in an Austin Maxi, freezing with the windows down to get rid of the condensation due to the lack of effective heater, let alone air con. The lack of town by-passes means you could be spending most of your time in choked up congestion, and car reliability means you spend the rest of the time by the side of the road or on a garage ramp. At the same time you’d probably be missing those landline phone calls from prospective pupils, and would certainly have no idea if a pupil needed to cancel at short notice. And when the pupils turn up to lessons they are likely to be ill prepared because they have no learning resources other than being in your car, where notes are written by hand on odd bits of paper that drift around the car at will. And so the list goes on.
Of course there is currently much to complain about in the life of the lone ADI, not least dreary depressing winter weather. But it is important to look at things from different perspectives, not just to navigate a more successful route looking at the road ahead, but also to study that rear view mirror and see what we have left behind – that in itself can be inspiring stuff.
