It's hard for the novice driver to work out where to get the best tuition. Brian Byrne drove around the Internet and the electronic highways to see what was on offer
It was so much less formal in my time. I spent several weeks before my birthday sitting in my Dad's car in the driveway, pressing the pedals, shifting the (three) gears, perusing the handbook. Then, on the day, I went in with my £1 and came out with a driving licence. And I was on the road.
With more people than ever tootling around blithely today on their provisional licences, it begs the question: What has changed apart from the price?
The number of cars, for a start. There are also masses of driving schools and instructors, pushing to give us both lessons and experience.
Despite this, almost half of all provisional licence holders fail their test on their first attempt. And since they can wait up to 10 months for their next try, they have plenty of time to do more than simply clock up further thousands of miles while they wait. One way to pass the time is to learn by heart The Official Driver Theory Test. God knows, from what we're seeing out there, it would do no harm for most of us to read it again.
In between bouts of revision, there's information on the Internet, CDs, both audio and visual, and there are even tapes claiming to use self-hypnosis.
You could, of course, take lessons. Lots of lessons. If you can get an instructor who is really good. Roll on the promised day of properly trained and registered driving instructors. And for the record, more than 40 years since I bought my first driving licence, I'm planning to finally do a test myself. The Advanced Motorists Driving Test. But I've some lessons to take first . . .
Soyouwanttodrive.com is a new Irish website aimed at giving people information on the procedures about looking for driving licences, tuition, and other bits-and-bobs about cars, such as taxation, insurance, buying and selling and finance.
It has some smart graphics, and links to articles either by the site operators and their contributors, to other sites such as the National Roads Authority, Irish School of Motoring, and the AA. The site also provides a county-by-county directory of driving instructors, which is more than does the National Register of Approved Driving Instructors, one of the other sites to which SYWTDAC is linked.
One of the best ideas on the site is a "mock theory test" which pops up a random set of questions from the new provisional driving licence theory test.
The site is operated by "four women and a token man" - motorcycle buff Katherine Bailey, content creator Roseanne Smith who speaks from a three-time-loser record before she passed her driving test, busy marketing director and flashy sports car enthusiast Sinead Deegan, publicist Doireann Gillan who hasn't yet got around to trying for her driving licence, and artist Mark Ellison who "looks fantastic behind the wheel of a mini".
Among the articles is the heartening one of spinal injury victim Dan Jansen and his determination to get back on the road. Overall, a site with a lot of enthusiasm behind it.
Now comes the hard work . . .
The Irish School of Motoring site (www.ism.ie) lacks the chirpiness of the SYWTDAC, but offers detail of the relevant procedure for applying for a provisional licence, as well as some guidelines about the test structure, pre-test preparation, and "things to do on test day" which includes "make sure you have a good breakfast".
The RAC School of Motoring (www.rac.ie/school.htm) seems more professional, but not hip enough, I suspect, for the young novice driver at whom it is primarily aimed. But they'll love the idea of the driving simulator, on which "you will learn how to move off and stop, mastering control of the clutch and progress onto steering and gear changes all on your own in a totally safe off-road environment at your own pace". Somehow it sounds a little too slow for the GameBoy generation! The RAC school thinks breakfast is good too, in this case recommending a "sensible" one.
The Airport Driving School (www.airportdrivingschool.com) - "Ireland's most successful" - is fairly simple, and doesn't go much into the advice arena, except to advise that the novice driver goes to them for a full course, including a mock test which has to be passed before they will "allow" a client go forward for the real thing.
The John A Ryan Driving School in Sligo (www.johnaryandriving.com) has a refreshingly rustic look to it, and links to a lot of the official government sites for driving licence and driving test application.
John also has the official "score card" used by testers, which is likely to frighten the hell out of a novice testee just by its extent alone, if not the arresting colour scheme. In relation to the school's "quizzes and questions" section, John caveats that copyright applies to the official book and CD for The Official Driver Theory Test: "Therefore we are unable to publish any questions from the book/CD. However some of the questions in our quizzes may accidentally bear some resemblance to the questions in The Official Driver Theory Test." Quite.
One of the newest outfits out there is Road Runner Driving Lessons (www.roadrunnerdrivinglessons.com), which was only recently set up in Mt Anville in Dublin. It has a simply designed site that outlines in easy-to-understand terms how they figure they are your best chance of succeeding . . . or they will pay for your next driving test, and every driving test you undertake until you pass.
There's no direct advice on the site itself, but Road Runner suggests you download their free booklet that has "51 things you must know" and also recounts the "seven deadly sins" people commit during their test.
They do ask you to give some info about yourself in the process, but promise "not to bombard" you with e-mails. The booklet is, as I expected, simple and to the point, and possibly the only thing in this investigation that I would call a "must read", and ends with a page-long plug for the Barretstown Gang Camp for sick children in Co Kildare. Which is nice.
Taking a look off-line but staying electronic, we found on the Easons "transport" bookshelf an audio CD set, The Republic of Ireland Rules of the Road produced by Image Promotions in Cork: it costs €15.24, and what Pat Costello of the National Safety Council gives his imprimatur to as "an excellent resource" comprising of two CDs and a colour inlay booklet. It also gets plaudits from the Garda and the AA. The booklet seemed a very useful thing for the learner driver to keep in a pocket, to check out what signs and Garda signals and road markings actually meant (preferably while a passenger). But the total of over two hours of narration by Fran Curry of Tipp FM is dire. Not Fran's fault, but the script they gave him sounds more like the statutory documents that make up our driving regulations than anything else.
It was sleep, perchance to dream of open roads, after listening to the first three of 51 tracks . . .
And finally it was the turn of psychotherapist and hypnoanalyst Tom Barlow to advise how to "pass your driving test" with the help of self-hypnosis.
This cassette tape production by ThorsonsAudio in Britain was valued at €11.73 and provided 45 minutes of listening, but warned that the tape "should not be listened to while driving".
"Hello. I am Tom Barlow. And I am going to explain to you what hypnosis is, how it works, and how it can help you to become a good and confident driver . . ." Zzzzz.
At least soyouwanttodrive.com has the promise of entertaining as well as informing.