Today I took a practice test for the lead up to my visit to the RTA with the driving school I am with.
Unfortunately, the test didn’t go so well, with just four fail items, and I had no idea why on earth I made them anyway.
Fail item 1: Colliding with a vehicle, pedestrian or object.
Thankfully, it wasn’t a pedestrian.
And before you think, wow, he smashed a car, it wasn’t a vehicle.
Unfortunately, doing one of those pesky reverse parrellel parks, I came in too quick and hit the kerb JUST. It mounted the kerb. Just. But still, would be a fail in a real test so something that needs to be worked on!
The other reason for this was coming around a small roundabout, of a weird shape, I hit the side of it, just, and that was another ‘collision’.
Never hit it before in all the times I’ve been out. Dunno why I did that.
Fail Item 2: Exceeding the speed limit
Yes, it sucks. But it isn’t what you think. The speed limit in a shared zone is 10. That funny white line at the start, which is RIGHT next to 0. That’s 10. I was doing 16 in a 10 shared zone.
Interesting isn’t it. I gotta stay at that white line, but even then, its nearly impossible to keep down at 10km, when its possible you’ll hit 11 – 12 or more.
Fail still, because its speeding. I should get out and push in that area, at that point, I wouldn’t go over 10km! It’s silly.
But of course, it boils down to the fact that the RTA can still fail that, and so it’s something needed to be worked on to ensure I don’t exceed the speed limit.
Fail Item 3: Not parking to the required standard.
Reverse park here again too. Mounting the kerb was fail item 1 of this particular reverse parallel park. The second part of it that failed me was that due to the kerb issue, we didn’t get straight enough I think.
Not a big issue, considering its still a safe result, but none the less, the RTA is the one who says yes or no.
Fail item 4: Frequently not making observation checks.
That’s actually not true, I check the mirrors, speed, and in front and around me regularly. I just don’t twist my head around to do it!
That’s apparently what the RTA like to see, so I have to basically move my head to look into mirrors rather than glance at it.. What’s the point in having a mirror that can be adjusted to the best possible viewing angle if you have to turn your head so the RTA believe you are actually checking it?
Why not just .. look at my eyes? They glance up that way frequently. I do check it. I notice a few things in the rear view mirror. Like tourists overtaking me in a 10k zone at a speed exceeding 30.
Or a woman on a cell phone worried and distracted and not focusing on me slowing down in front of her.
Or kids that like to jump in front of the car, to make sure they don’t (or should that be do ?) get hit by the car that was behind me..
Still an important aspect, so noticeable mirror checks is something we’ll definitely put the time into, to top that off, check all blind spots.
Believe it or not, you have to check blind spots coming off a roundabout.
Not really a easy thing to do when the flow of traffic is dictating a roundabout speed of around 30k and the roundabout certainly isn’t big enough to do anything if something is hiding in your blind spot anyway.
But of course, the RTA is the RTA. Must check those!
This was all a practice and nothing to do with the RTA, just a lead up to the RTA, and basically shows what is a one possible outcome for when I visit them soon to get my licence.
There is an assessments column, which contains 25 assessment items, they don’t name them however, so its not really easy to determine what aspect they were testing.
The columns refer to speed, positioning, decision making, hazards, responding to hazards, vehicle control.
My scores on those were something like 20+ / 25 for speed, 20+ / 25 for positioning, 17+ / 25 for decision making .. interesting – hard to tell the scoring and decisions made there though, 20+ / 25 for hazards, 25+ / 25 for responding to hazards, and 20+ / 25 for vehicle control.
So, the majority of those to me are in the high end of the scale, which tells me that my overall score was 85+%. A bit shy of that 90% that would pass me. A fair bit short of the desired 100% – I like to aim high.
Another day, we’ll get another practice in to be sure, and see what happens then!!
Hopefully, soon enough I’ll be able to celebrate having my license, after sitting on my L’s, doing little in the way of getting licensed and instead being pretty much bulked up on inventive works for a while.
2003 I got my L’s. It’s nearly 2008. I think my real motivation was realising it’s time to actually do something about that time difference.
It’s not that I’m lazy, I just didn’t get into too much demand to get my licence. I tend to just make do, and public transport isn’t that bad. Sure, its dictated by someone else as to when you leave, and when you return and the time it takes to get there, but that’s nothing too serious if you don’t really put any time pressures in place.
But, now that I’ve actually started, I really do want to get licensed. Many have said that I won’t know myself with it. They are starting to seem right. It makes a day so, so, much more interesting.
Enjoy!