This is the first of a new set of blog posts that I intend to read like a diary piece. The intention is to do them weekly and see what lessons can be drawn from each week.
I'm starting them at the end of the first full week of work that we've been able to do as an industry since the government lifted lock-down restrictions on us.
This week, everyone has worn a mask, everyone has avoided paying cash, everyone has agreed to have their temperature taken, nobody has cancelled their training session and nobody has displayed any concerns about the virus.
The only problem with those masks is that, although they're not tight, they wear grooves into the tops of your ears after about 8 to 10 hours of wearing them, leaving your ears feeling bruised and looking dented - it's certainly a relief to take them off at the end of the day and I feel the pain of all those people in care work and at the NHS etc who've been wearing them for ages!
But of course, the masks are necessary.
As ADI's, we are sitting 18 inches away from somebody else in a well ventilated, yet otherwise enclosed space and either of us may have the virus and not know it.
In everything I've read up about the virus in the last few months, the one question that remained unanswered related to the number of people who contract it without displaying symptoms but more and more reports and studies are now concluding that the answer to that question is that it is around 80%. In other words, if you deliberately infected a group of 100 people, then 80 of them would be expected to display no symptoms. If it's true, that's a horrendous figure because we all rely on people displaying symptoms in order to recognise that they have the virus, stay in and protect the rest of us!
So the masks are essential PPE for anyone working in close proximity to others and it's disappointing when you see an ADI not wearing them, or hear them saying that "I've told the clients that I'll wear one if they want me to" (which is an incredibly unfair position to put a teenager in - can you imagine ANY teenager insisting that you wear a mask??)
If people like us, in high risk situations don't wear them, then what happened in Leicester WILL happen again. Local lock-downs are a reality where there are local outbreaks and no matter how self conscious or uncool people feel about wearing masks, we ALL lose out if that happens.
It's worth saying that the majority of ADI's I've seen this week ARE wearing PPE though, and that's a good thing.
It's also worth considering if you're learning to drive without masks that they are mandatory for both people in the car when you take your driving test. DVSA have already released that information to say that the examiners will be wearing them and expect that the clients also wear them - if you're not used to it when you take your test, you're going to be at a disadvantage in the same way that you would be if you were driving a new car on test day.
Other things I've been doing in the car this week is cleaning it before and after every driver!
That's interesting when the client comes and stands in the middle of the road waiting for you to get out of the car whilst you're trying to wipe it down - you start power cleaning!!
In order to be effective, the cleaning must cover all contact surfaces with soap, as the virus has a fatty coating that is destroyed in soap leaving it fatally wounded so not only does every surface need to be touched by a wipe, that surface needs to be coated with a fresh, soapy wipe and left wet to the touch for a couple of minutes whilst the soap does it's job.
This is again something that examiners will be doing before they enter the car for a driving test.
If you are doing it yourself, then anti-bacterial wipes from the supermarket are fine and don't damage the interior, but you must be careful not to buy ones that contain bleach - because that WILL harm the interior!
The windows have also been open this week and the Heko Wind Deflectors I purchased to allow the windows to be open in all weathers have been put to their test with all the rain we've had.
In spite of it getting pretty heavy from time to time this week, I've been pleased to see that very little rain has entered the car (any that has, has come in through the very back of the rear windows where the deflectors don't cover). Ventilation in the cabin, particularly on fast roads, has been fantastic and it hasn't been too noisey. These wind deflectors are available easily by searching on line (I got mine through EBay) - mine cost around £40 for the set and look great on the car.
So that's it for this week. Driving instruction requires an ADI to do a lot of things in their head when they're working. They watch the road, plan how they'd drive along it themselves if they were driving, plan escape routes in case anything goes wrong AND watch the client to see if their actions match what the ADI would do or are otherwise appropriate for the road conditions IN ADDITION to actually talking to the client about their driving! Mentally, a driving lesson is a busy time for an ADI and you develop a kind of fitness if you do it regularly, so you can cope. It's obvious that after 14 weeks off, I've lost some of that mental fitness and it's been a tiring week... the day off is very welcome and there are more days off next week to enjoy!
Whatever you're doing this weekend, enjoy it!
Nick Heath Driver Training is located in Rode Heath on the Staffordshire / Cheshire border and provides driving training services to those looking to either improve their driving or learn from scratch. In addition to media work, we conduct Taxi Driver Assessments for local authorities and offer Advanced Driver Training and Testing, Motorway Training and Fuel Efficient Driver Training alongside refresher courses and learner driving lessons. We are ORDIT registered to provide Driving Instructor Training and are listed on the DVSA's register of Fleet Trainers so we can help you with your business needs.
More details are available on our website www.nickheathdrivertraining.org.uk
