From the Vault: Was the practice area suitable?

[upbeat music] One of the test...

I think, I think this is why it's important to know your local test area, area quite well, because one of mine that I use is, is Farnborough, which is in, in Bradford.

It's kind of on the border between Leeds and Bradford.

And within a 10-minute radius of Farnborough, you can cover literally everything, including motorways, rural roads, dual carriageways, big roundabouts, little roundabouts, everything you can cover in that area.

So if I was to do a standards check there, for example, it'd be really easy to divert and go somewhere else because I know the area.

So while it's not necessarily imperative that, what do you call them, a student knows the area for the test, it's pretty important that we know.

Because again, this is the difference.

Where I am, it's a 30-minute drive to a test center.

So when I do lessons where I am, not only do I need to know this area, but I then need to know the test area for when I go and do that standards check because I'm being forced to a lesson there.

You know, I need to know when I come to the end of the road, if I turn left, still a residential area.

If I turn right, we're going on towards a dual carriageway that's 70 mile an hour.

I need to know that.

So how important do you think that is, actually knowing that, that area of the test center so you can make those decisions?

Yes.

To- totally.

And [clears throat] I, I think if the...

It, it's something that I, I was really guilty of when I, when I was just teaching, you know, my pupils and, and, you know, doing the, the, the driving instructor job.

And I...

You, you, you hear the, the ears prick up when people say about being in test center areas, knowing where the tests work.

What we, we don't mean know the route that they take, we mean the area in which it's in.

But then there's this whole thing of, you know, you're teaching test routes or...

And, and, and it ends up being really political and really judgemental.

And then I started working with PDIs, and they needed to know because they n- that's what they needed to go and do.

They needed to know, not necessarily the, the area where the test is, but other places as well.

If they were picking a pupil up from a particular town, where's the best nursery area to go? Once that pupil can deal with wheels moving stuff, fine, you can go wherever as long as you dodge certain areas.