The Driving Standards Agency (DSA) in conjunction with the motorcycle industry has launched a new Enhanced Rider Scheme to encourage all bikers to assess their riding skills and identify training needs. The scheme will be one of a number of options for bikers to be highlighted at this years RideSafe Rendezvous.Working closely with training experts, the DSA has developed a syllabus for post test riders with a full bike licence that will help to improve skills, regardless of age, experience or the size of their machine.The Enhanced Rider Scheme (ERS) will operate through a network of approved, accredited trainers who are able to identify areas that would benefit from further training. If necessary, a combination of practical and theoretical learning can be tailored to the needs of the rider in a development programme. For those demonstrating a good level of competency and no areas of significant risk, a certificate would be issued to that effect. This certificate can be presented to any one of a number of large specialist insurers who are sponsoring the scheme and offering significant discounts to riders meeting the ERS standard.Blackburn based PASStime Motorcycle Training are an approved training body and a forum partner to the RideSafe BackSafe initiative and trainer Wendy Whalley has this advice for anyone interested in the scheme;-“The Enhanced Rider Scheme is similar to the PASS Plus scheme for car drivers, but offers two real incentives to bike riders. The benefit of reduced insurance costs is tangible but in my mind, the support and encouragement that this scheme offers to all bikers – not just those who have recently passed their test - is of greater value. As an industry, we need to motivate bikers to appraise their own skills and to want to improve them. No biker knows it all, so it must follow that everyone would benefit from an increased awareness of the risks and enhancing their riding techniques“.Information about the ERS and numerous other assessments, rider development and training schemes will be available at this years RideSafe Rendezvous at Fairhaven Lake in Lytham St Annes on Sunday 13th April. The RideSafe BackSafe team, together with the Institute of Advanced Motoring, instructors, police motorcyclists and representative bodies such as BMF and MAG will all be on hand to meet more than 6,000 bikers with road safety and skills training in mind.

The Budget has set out new policies intended to reduce emissions across all major sectors of the economy, and ensure the UK leads the climate change agenda internationally.

Car tax rates and bandings

Budget 2008 announced the reform of the car tax structure. New bands will be introduced from 2009, to reward drivers of the cleanest cars. There will also be higher first-year rates in 2010, to influence car buying choices.

Pre-graduated VED (registered before March 2001):

Graduated VED for Private Vehicles (registered from March 2001):

* for new cars registered from 23 March 2006

Vehicle excise duty for motorcycles:

Vehicle excise duty for motorised tricycles:

Changes to VED rates will take effect from 13 March 2008.

Fuel duty – increase delayed

The planned fuel duty increase of 2 pence per litre in April 2008 will be delayed until 01 October 2008. Main road fuel duty rates will rise by 1.84 pence per litre on 01 April 2009, and will increase by 0.5 pence per litre above inflation on 01 April 2010.

Source: Direct Gov website 12/03/08

Any comments from driving instructors who are members of BADDIA (Bedford and District Driving Instructors Association) giving driving lessons in Bedford?

If you are paying someone to teach you to drive, they must be approved and registered with the Driving Standards Agency (DSA). Only a registered approved driving instructor (ADI) can charge money for teaching you to drive.

Recent surveys indicate that nine in ten learners who passed both theory and practical tests first time were taught by an instructor. A fully qualified approved driving instructor (ADI) must display a green certificate on the windscreen of the car while teaching you. Some trainee driving instructors are granted a licence so they can gain experience before their qualifying examination. In this case, the trainee driving instructor must display a pink certificate on the windscreen.

DSA is responsible for maintaining and checking the standards of all approved driving instructors (ADI), who to qualify must:

Driving and talking on your mobile is as bad as drink-driving, say researchers

Listening to a mobile phone while driving reduces concentration by more than a third, a study has found.

The loss of focus is said to lead to the same mistakes that drink-drivers make, such as weaving between lanes.

The study examined the effects of motorists simply listening to a voice. They were not required to talk or press any buttons.

Marcel Just, a member of the research team, said: “Drivers need to keep not only their hands on the wheel, they also have to keep their brains on the road. Drivers’ seats in many vehicles are becoming highly instrumented cockpits and during difficult driving situations they require the undivided attention of the driver’s brain.

“The clear implication is that engaging in a demanding conversation could jeopardise judgement and reaction time.”

The study, by scientists at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, found that listening to a mobile phone reduces the amount of brain activity associated with driving by 37 per cent.

The results were based on the performance of 29 volunteers, who were asked to use a driving simulator while sitting inside a brain scanner.

They were told to steer a car along a virtual, winding road at a challenging speed twice.

The first time there were no distractions but the second time they were told to listen to a sentence and decide whether it was true or false.

Listening while driving resulted in lower activity in the parts of the brain associated with spatial sense, navigation and visual information.

Last month, the RAC Foundation found that nearly half of motorists regularly flout the law by texting while driving and a quarter have talked on a hand-held mobile.

The penalty for mobile phone offences was raised last February to a £60 fine and three penalty points.

Source: The Daily Mail website 06/03/08 , By OLINKA KOSTER

Any comments from driving instructors who are members of BADDIA (Bedford and District Driving Instructors Association) giving driving lessons in Bedford?

Drivers are to be given the option of paying to drive faster in extra lanes on up to 500 miles of Britain’s most congested motorways.

The toll lanes, part of a government plan for road pricing, will have signposted speed limits 10 or 20mph faster than on adjacent uncharged lanes.

The lanes will be created from 2010, either by turning the hard shoulder into a running lane or by building an extra lane.

Drivers travelling with at least one passenger may be allowed free access to some of the lanes but, on others, the Department for Transport (DfT) will make all vehicles pay to ensure that traffic flows freely.

Similar toll lanes are in use in America, where they have been dubbed “Lexus lanes” because of the perception that only wealthier drivers can afford to use them. The DfT has yet to decide how much motorists will pay to use the lanes but in America drivers pay about £5 at the busiest times.

The speed limit for each lane will be displayed on overhead gantries. The lanes will be enforced by CCTV cameras on the gantries, which will also carry beacons to detect pre-paid tags in the windscreens of passing cars.

The toll lanes are likely to be introduced on the most congested sections of the M1, M4, M3, M5 near Bristol, M6, M20, M23, M27 and M62, the DfT said yesterday. The Highways Agency believes that it could save more than £1 billion by abandoning plans to widen parts of the M1, M6 and M62 and instead converting the hard shoulder into a running lane from 2010. Motorway widening costs up to £40 million a mile; hard shoulder conversion costs £10 million.

Ruth Kelly, the Transport Secretary, said: “Allowing motorists to enter a reserved lane if they are carrying passengers or willing to pay a toll gives them a real choice without having to change their route.

“If your journey is absolutely essential, such as when catching a flight or attending a funeral or important business meeting, you will know you are going to get there on time without having to allow an extra half hour in case of gridlock.”

Ms Kelly said that the initiative would help the Government to move beyond the “sterile debate” between road-pricing enthusiasts and those who claim it will be a stealth tax.

But she made clear that the Government believed that road pricing, in which drivers would pay a fee for each mile travelled on all congested roads, was the best long-term solution. Trials of road pricing will begin in the autumn and local charging schemes in Manchester and Cambridge are likely to be approved after the local government elections in May. Ms Kelly said that councils could bid for a share of £200 million a year, which the DfT would make available until 2019 for local congestion-charging schemes.

Motoring and business groups welcomed the idea of toll lanes but expressed concern that using the hard shoulder would not provide as much extra capacity as building a new lane.

David Frost, the director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce, said: “We need extra capacity and that means building new roads. Opening up motorway hard shoulders cannot be a long-term answer to solving congestion on our motorways.”

Edmund King, the president of the AA, said that once toll lanes had been introduced it would be a simple step to introducing charges on the other lanes. He said that drivers would be willing to pay a toll for a fast journey on an extra lane but not for a slow trip on a converted hard shoulder.

Peter Hendy, the chairman of the Commission for Integrated Transport, said: “This is a clever way forward on the contentious issue of road pricing because it gives people a choice.”

Friends of the Earth said: “Extra motorway lanes are not the answer to Britain’s transport problems. The additional capacity will encourage more traffic, which may lead to more climate-changing pollution.”

Rob Gifford, the director of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, said: “Two limits on the same motorway could confuse drivers. The Government would need to think very carefully about the unintended consequence of more crashes on a more controlled network.”

Source: The Times Online website 05/03/08, Ben Webster, Transport Correspondent

Any comments from driving instructors who are members of BADDIA (Bedford and District Driving Instructors Association) giving driving lessons in Bedford?

DRIVERS are to be allowed to use the hard shoulder on motorways under government plans to be announced this week.

Ruth Kelly, the transport secretary, will say a trial into hard shoulder driving has been a success and that it will be introduced on the busiest stretches of most motorways.

Under the plan, drivers will be able to use lanes traditionally reserved for the emergency services and broken-down vehicles. They will be able to drive at 50mph in areas where jams are most common.

The extra lanes will be open during peak periods. They will be flanked by new emergency lay-bys at regular intervals.

The government believes the plan will cut average journey times on the most congested motorways by up to a quarter.

Hard shoulder driving is well established in some European countries, including Germany and the Netherlands.

Kelly believes a study into the trial, published this week, shows that safety concerns are unfounded. She will argue that introducing the plan to a “very large proportion” of motorways will have many benefits.

The policy has been given a cautious welcome by motoring groups. However, experts raised questions about its sustainability, warning that new lanes were likely to be the only long-term solution in the most congested areas.

The Department for Transport study is expected to conclude most drivers support the use of hard shoulders in the rush hour. It found that 84% who used the hard shoulder during trials on the M42 felt confident doing so.

Contrary to expectations, there was a significant fall in the number of accidents on the route.

There was also a drop of up to 10% in carbon emissions, as vehicles were less likely to be at a standstill.

Kelly said: “If we do nothing, we will be managing road space in the worst way possible – by gridlock. That’s traffic management done in the most blinkered, inefficient way, a way that guarantees the worst outcomes for motorists, for air quality and for our economy.”

Routes to be included in the scheme will be named this week. The plan is substantially cheaper than the most obvious alternative: building new lanes.

The first routes to benefit are expected to be parts of the M6 and M1. The initial speed limit of 50mph may be increased, according to officials. London drivers, however, will be disappointed to learn that the M25 is not expected to be part of the scheme.

Under the plan, technology will measure the weight of traffic on the road. When congestion reaches a certain level, reduced speed limits are triggered, followed by the opening of the hard shoulder. Cameras will be used to detect drivers using the spare lane in periods when it is not open.

Ministers have been particularly impressed by the extent to which the use of the hard shoulder helped drivers judge how long their journey would take, providing benefits to the economy.

Police will be able to “switch off” hard shoulder lane use in seconds in the event of an accident. An earlier proposal, to create an extra lane by using part of the hard shoulder and narrowing existing lanes, has been dropped.

Paul Watters, head of policy for the Automobile Association, said: “The beauty of this is that you can turn it on and off in a second. It can work very well. However, we want to know what our motorway system is going to look like in 20 years. The best solution is to carry on widening motorways but that takes a long time.”

Motoring groups have particular concerns about heavy congestion on the Birmingham and Manchester corridor, which they believe cannot be resolved by hard shoulder use.

During the year-long M42 trial, drivers were allowed to use the hard shoulder on an 11-mile stretch of motorway south of Birmingham.

Source: The Times Online website 03/03/08, Isabel Oakeshott, Deputy Political Editor

Any comments from driving instructors who are members of BADDIA (Bedford & District Driving Instructors Association) giving driving lessons in the Bedford area?

The cost of learning to drive will rise by up to £500 under government plans to introduce more rigorous training and testing for both learner-drivers and instructors.

The biggest reform of driver training for a generation, due to be announced this month, will force learners to have extra lessons and prove that they have acquired key skills before taking the practical driving test.

The changes are being made to address the rising death toll from crashes caused by inexperienced and reckless young drivers.

More than 14 young drivers and their passengers are killed every week in Britain. Male drivers aged 17 to 20 are almost ten times more likely to be killed or seriously injured behind the wheel than men aged 40 to 59. One in three young drivers admits overtaking while unable to see what is coming, compared with one in ten older drivers, according to a survey commissioned by Brake, a road safety charity.

Under the proposals, to be published in a consultation document, learners will have to accumulate skills in a series of modules, with their attainment verified by a driving instructor. The modules will include basic skills such as parallel parking as well as areas not now tested, such as using high speed roads and driving at night.

Some elements of the Pass Plus scheme, under which newly qualified drivers take between five and ten extra lessons in return for cheaper insurance, will be incorporated in the training for all learners. The changes will increase the time it takes to qualify, meaning fewer 17-year-olds will gain licences.

The standard of tuition will also be improved.

Many learners do not realise how variable the quality of instruction can be. Fewer than 7 per cent of the 36,000 instructors hold the top Grade 6 qualification and most are Grade 4, which is one above the unsatisfactory level that triggers a requirement for a further test.

Eddie Barnaville, the chief executive of the Driving Instructors’ Association, said that the cost of learning to drive was likely to rise by about 50 per cent because candidates would need to take up to ten extra lessons and each would be more expensive.

The average cost of a lesson is £22 but this will rise to about £32 because instructors will face greater training costs. There will also be fewer of them, especially part-time, meaning there will be less competition.

Mr Barnaville said a candidate taking the recommended 42 hours of professional tuition was likely to see the costs rise from £1,000 to about £1,500 once the new rules were introduced next year.

“That may sound a lot of money but isn’t much when you consider you are obtaining a skill for life. Better training will save lives and what price can you put on that?”

The AA welcomed the improvement in training but said many poorer families would struggle to afford lessons.

Andrew Howard, the AA’s head of road safety, said: “It could damage the employment prospects of young people if it takes a lot longer to get a licence. We would also be worried if the new test penalises those academically less able.”

Jim Fitzpatrick, the Road Safety Minister, said in a Westminster Hall debate last month: “Young people are almost fatalistic about having accidents as novice drivers. They know that they must do some training to pass the test, but they seem to expect to teach themselves ‘real driving’ once they have passed.

“We do not believe that young people should be left to learn such a vital skill in that fashion.”

Source: The Times Online website 01/03/08, Ben Webster, Transport Correspondent

Any comments from driving instructors who are members of BADDIA (Bedford and District Driving Instructors Association) giving driving lessons and Pass Plus in Bedford?

Remember, you saw it here on the BADDIA website first!