Regulatory Body for Driving Instructors?

Transport21 Fan

A woman I know who is very nervous is sitting her driving test in a couple of weeks. So apart from studying, she took some lessons from three seperate driving schools and some of the experiences were pretty horrible.

In one case the instructor constantly took bookings from other students during the course of the lessons and would occasionally grunt "TURN LEFT AT THE NEXT LIGHT PAST THAT RED YOKE!" and other incoherant or vague orders. During the course of the one hour lessons she said about 30 minutes of it were him on the phone taking bookings. At the end of the lessons he pronounced. "No way will you pass your driving test and you needs loads more lessons" This really affected her self-confidence and this woman I know is a very good and catious driver.

Another driving instructor just sat there beside her saying nothing. She kept sayng things like "Did I do this correctly?" and so on to which he would respond "Grand so" and nothing else. At the end of the test he proclaimed "you will have no trouble passing your driving test."

When I first moved to Ireland from the US about 8 years ago I took lessons before my test to get my mind back on Irish driving again and I had the same experiences. Poor driving instructors who just seemed to want to sit there with you for an hour and take your money at the end of the lesson.

Is there any kind of certifaction a driving instructor in Ireland requires to start a driving school? What about a regulatory body. We hear so much about poor driving standards in Ireland, yet I feel personally that bad driving instructors is part of the problem.

Alun

Transport21 Fan wrote:

Is there any kind of certifaction a driving instructor in Ireland requires to start a driving school?

As far as I know, none whatsoever. Anybody can just set themselves up as a driving instructor with no formal training at all apart from a driving licence. You could be a convicted rapist AFAIK and noone would be any the wiser.

What about a regulatory body.

Again, as far as I know, no. There is a voluntary association to which you can affiliate yourself, I think, but that's as far as it goes. Cullen has said recently that he intends to set up such a thing, but whether this'll actually happen, who knows?

We hear so much about poor driving standards in Ireland, yet I feel personally that bad driving instructors is part of the problem.

Agreed 100%.

Transport21 Fan

So no regulation. Amazing. You have to wonder how many accidents have been caused by people who used doggy driving instructrors.

Alun

There's this lot http://www.iol.ie/~idia/, but that's all I could find, and membership is entirely voluntary.

aliveandkicking

Not really related to the regulation issue but I found Irish School of Motoring instructors very good. I passed my test first time after only a few months driving after being taught by them and also a person I work with failed her test first time round, I recommended ISM* to her and she done two pre test lessons with them next time and passed with flying colours.



* I am in no way shape or form connected to ISM and know nobody who works for them.

Chris_533976

A lot of driving testers/instructors here are complete idiots. There is no regulation, it is a complete and utter joke and it is a shameful disgrace that an EU country is like this.

I was lucky that I had an excellent driving instructor.

A bit of advice for her for test day - take a pre-test. A couple of hours before the test, have a driving lesson. She'll make all her mistakes then and it will help a bit for the test.

Irish Salfordia

Transport21 Fan wrote:

Is there any kind of certifaction a driving instructor in Ireland requires to start a driving school? What about a regulatory body. We hear so much about poor driving standards in Ireland, yet I feel personally that bad driving instructors is part of the problem.

Unfortunately, most of this is completely true. Any profession which is not regulated has its cowboys.(I could go on for ever about bad plumbers, but there are also good ones etc) But as in any other instance there are plenty of excellent driving instructors around. Ask friends or work colleagues who they learned from and were they good. Look on the web - any decent driving school will have a GOOD website, not just about their school, but giving lots of good information. Check to see if the instructor is registered with the D.I.R. (Driving Instructors Register) Yes,this is a voluntary group, but cowboy instructors will not willingly pay to be examined and check tested - would they!

The I.D.I.A. (Irish Driving Instructors Association) is also a good starting point. All instructors registered with the IDIA MUST be D.I.R. tested and examined. Pity their web site is so out of date and useless

Yes, Cullen is promosing to regulate the proffession at last - but this has been promised to my knowledge for the last #### years by previous ministers of transport. The D.I.R. was set up by the good instructors in the industry to set standards and promote good teaching. Unfortunately, previous governments have not followed through on making this compulsory.

Please do not give up. Ther ARE VERY good, knowledgeable, caring, experienced instructors out there. I repeat, get advice from the web, from friends, family and colleagues. DO NOT go to an instructor who has no record, no website, no qualifications. - let common sense prevail

Victor

Alun wrote:

As far as I know, none whatsoever. Anybody can just set themselves up as a driving instructor with no formal training at all apart from a driving licence. You could be a convicted rapist AFAIK and noone would be any the wiser.

Nope. You don't even need a driving licence. You could simply insist on people having their second provisional.

The RSA have it as one of the jobs they will take on.

Trampas

Irish Salfordia wrote:

DO NOT go to an instructor who has no record, no website, no qualifications. - let common sense prevail

No website. Thats a bit much. You want someone to teach you how to drive not teach you how to build a website.

I know a DIR qualified instructor and he wouldn't know how to turn on a PC. Does that makes him a bad teacher.

Chris_533976

Go by local opinion too. Ask people you know who they used, see their reaction, and go with that guy.

Linoge

Its not regulated and there is no need for it to be regulated. If the driving instuctor is no good, get a new one. If s/he is taking calls and not teaching you, say so. Nothing says that you have to stand for it.

Driving lessons work the same way as every other service market ie. if they are no good = out of business. I don't see anyone calling for the regulation language tutors:rolleyes:

Hotblack Desiato

Linoge wrote:

Its not regulated and there is no need for it to be regulated.

400 deaths a year would suggest otherwise.

Driving lessons work the same way as every other service market ie. if they are no good = out of business.

Except this isn't selling turnips, where if you don't like the quality of turnips in Shop X (and this is immediately apparent) you can go to another shop. It's providing a service which is vital to road safety and the current mess is contributing to high test failure rates (and therefore waiting lists). Worse than that, it's arguably a contributory factor to the rates of death and injury on the roads. It's obvious that far too many Irish drivers simply haven't a clue. Proper driver education and training is vital.

With the chancers, the customer often has no idea how poor the service that they're buying is until they fail their test. And even then, more often than not they'll blame the tester, themselves, "failure quotas" or other myths, and not their crap instructor.

People in general have a poor understanding of road traffic law, proper driving skills etc. (e.g. talk of mythical "fast lanes" etc.) and simply don't know enough to catch a dodgy instructor out. They believe what they're told because they think the instructor knows what they're talking about. I've heard all sorts of downright dangerous or illegal things which dodgy driving instructors have told their pupils to do. I've also seen some very dodgy driving by driving school cars (with no pupil in the car.)

Would you be happy with, say, flying instructors being totally unregulated? This is the sort of laissez-faire "the market will sort out everything" bull**** I thought we'd heard the last of when Maggie T retired.

Irish Salfordia

Trampas wrote:

No website. Thats a bit much. You want someone to teach you how to drive not teach you how to build a website.

I know a DIR qualified instructor and he wouldn't know how to turn on a PC. Does that makes him a bad teacher.

NO. Not having a web-site does not constitute a bad driving instructor - obviously. What i was trying to say is that one possible way of checking out a driving school is to check out their web-site. A good driving school will provide lots of information about all aspects of driving and about the driving test, not just about their own personal school. You can often get a good indication about a driving school from their web-site.

Capt'n Midnight

Linoge wrote:

Its not regulated and there is no need for it to be regulated. If the driving instuctor is no good, get a new one. If s/he is taking calls and not teaching you, say so. Nothing says that you have to stand for it.

Driving lessons work the same way as every other service market ie. if they are no good = out of business. I don't see anyone calling for the regulation language tutors:rolleyes:

With waiting times in the order of a year, a dodgy instructor can make a lot of cash before they are found out.

In the UK you can't even get lessons from anyone at all unless they've had a full driving license for three years (not sure if they also need to be over 25).

Irish Salfordia

If you have a gripe about bad driving instruction or a good idea about how to sort it out, read the draft regulations being proposed by Martin Cullen and the R.S.A. and make your own comments before September 8th.

The proposed regulations can be found at:-
http://www.transport.ie/viewitem.asp?id=7655&lang=ENG&loc=1722

This is PDF format and contains proposals for new registration of Driving Instructors