How much of that are you responsible for what they do afterwards?

Um...

That's a difficult one.

I don't know whether I can tell you how much responsibility I have.

I can tell you how much responsibility I feel like I have.

And that is probably more than maybe I need, but I don't see that as a bad thing.

So personally, for myself, and I think I said this recently as well, I'm not that bothered on whether my learners pass their test.

And I think that driving instructors can use this negative use of social media, flip it on its head through conversations in the car about even finding one of these videos that they're rife on social media and saying, right, what do you think of that? What do you think of that? How would you feel if you were sat in the back of that car at that moment in time? How would you feel? and use it as a positive learning experience, but very much against that type of use of social

So maybe lead in with that.

I mean, to a certain degree, we might need to define what people are thinking as being independent or going down a franchise route.

As we said earlier, if you're going down a trainee license route, you will have to have a sponsoring ADI that looks after that process.

The chances are, I think for the majority of even just non-big driving schools, so even just independent trainers, most of the ones that I know have some kind of franchise when somebody goes on a trainee license.

And this is my personal opinion.

I think the word franchise has been absolutely ruined within our industry because it has such a negative term.

And what it really should do, and I don't want this to be into kind of a rant either, but like a traditional kind of franchise, if you go into something like a subway franchise it's completely different to what a franchise is with the driving school you get quite a lot of autonomy within that as opposed to within a driving school most places don't do that you are in a contract and this would be my advice is that if you are going to sign any type of contract or legal document to work with a trainer, whether you're independent or whether you're going on to a bigger franchise, a bigger driving school, It is absolutely worth walking the money out to get a professional to read through that contract before you sign it, because you are going to be investing a lot of time and effort and money within this, and you need that document to be, as with all contract, it needs to be suitable for both parties.

What would be the benefits of someone joining an association, a PDI specifically? And yeah, why should they?

They're afraid to do something differently.

Oh yeah, and I think that is, that's humans in a nutshell, considerably.

You know, we find a way that works and we just kind of do it.

Even if it doesn't work for everyone, we pitch it somewhere in the middle.

And breaking out of those barriers is and can be very difficult for people, but I think it's...

Again, I'm biased because that is my energy and I've always done that.

So I struggle to see the opposite of why you wouldn't go and do that.

Anything else you want to touch on with cancellations or anything like that, Tom?

So that talk, what was it about, Tom?

It was about how kind of our brain can often deceive us.

Um, and it makes us a little bit biased about some of the things that we see and some of the things that we think that we see.

So I think one of the words that you're referring to is one of my favorite words, which is conspicuity.

Um, and in simple terms, this is how conspicuous something can be.

So we have what's called sensory conspicuity, and that is perhaps a motorcyclist who's wearing brightly colored clothes so it makes them a little bit more, um, visible to our senses.

But the cognitive conspicuity part of it is that if we're not actively looking for the motorcyclist, even if they're in brightly colored clothes, we probably won't see them.

So did you wanna go a bit more into that?

That's really interesting, isn't it? Because a lot of people say to me, ultimately it's the ADI that needs to keep the vehicle safe my argument is if we're not watching the driver keep the vehicle safe effectively we're not keeping the vehicle safe just unpack that a little for me Tom

Yeah, I mean, it goes still along the same lines of ultimately we have that responsibility to manage risk and to keep people safe.

But from the moment the learner gets in the driver's seat, they have responsibility as well.

I'm kind of moving back a little bit here, but that's why also coaching can be hugely powerful is to allow that learner to be able to take more responsibility for those types of things.

But with that aside, I have to assess the learner.

I have to manage the risk.

And if we're coming into a built up area or a busier area and I happen to look at my learner and I can begin to see they're looking a little bit nervous or they've got white knuckles.

Are there any other reasons why we should keep silent?