Dealing with other road users

As you prepare for your new career you are probably noticing driving school cars much more than you did before. One of the things that you will come across, especially if you are practising your driving on quiet housing estates, are learners doing the turn-in-the road.

If you are a courteous driver (we hope you are!) you might choose to give way when you see a learner practising the turn, but have you come across a situation where a driving instructor has waved you past? If not yet, you will do soon enough...

But waving other drivers past is BAD PRACTICE, whether with a learner driver or during your own ADI driving test.

As an experienced driver you should be able to judge the potential actions of other road users - therefore, when completing the turn-in-the-road, if another driver approaches you should be able to quickly recognise his/her intentions.

In addition to having good judgement you should also have the control skills to act promptly on what you see. If the other driver gives way you should be able to complete your turn safely and efficiently.

At no time should you need to wave to other drivers:

1. because they can make their own decisions and you can adjust your actions to fit in with those decisions.

2. It is good practice to stick with the signals shown in the Highway Code - unofficial signals can cause confusion. For example, a driver giving way to someone doing a turn-in-the road might be doing so because of an accident or other bad past experience in a similar situation. An 'instruction' to go through could put pressure on the driver leading to a potentially dangerous situation.

Drivers and driving instructors are not traffic controllers!

Sometimes a driving instructor will choose to wave other drivers through to ease the pressure on the pupil, however, the reason that the pressure is there in the first place is more than likely due to poor lesson planning. The pupil should either not be doing the manoeuvre, or doing it in a much quieter location.

Article

As background information click here to download an article about signals and misleading signals.

This article isn't about the turn in the road as such, but the general principles regarding signalling apply to the question of 'waving'.

Next: Watch the turn-in-the-road demonstration in Step 5.