Observations from your assessment lesson

Your overall control of the car is great, you've really mastered this!  You're able to use the clutch effectively to both move off and manipulate your move off/manoeuvring speed.  Your use of the accelerator is effective with a good knowledge of when to increase or decrease the pressure.  Your use of the brake pedal is both controlled and measured.

The next stage of your driving journey is effectively develop the skills to communicate with other road users and interpreting how they communicate with you.  Once you've developed these skills you'll be able to use the information you gather to anticipate and plan for the road ahead.

I've listed some specific development areas below.  It is however important to remember that as you're not currently at the required test standard there are a number of areas we weren't able to look at on your assessment lesson.  These were complex roundabouts, national speed limit roads, manoeuvres, one way streets, independently overtaking cyclists, emergency stop, show me questions, country roads, duel carriageways, independent driving and following a sat nav.

Move off/stopping

Whilst your car control is good in both of these situations your focus is primarily on what you're doing as opposed to those around you and communicating with them.  When moving off you're failing to complete all round observation (in particular your right blind spot check).  Without doing this there is no way to know its safe to move off.  When pulling over your primary focus is on where you're going to pull over as opposed to firstly assessing what other road users are around and communicating with them effectively.  This means you'll be slowing down and your break lights coming on before you've considered if there is another road user close behind you.

Road Positioning

After the tweaks we made to where you were looking your basic road positioning is great.  When more complex situations arise however you don't yet have the knowledge and experience to correctly position your car to manage the risk to you and others.  An example of this is emerging left from All Saints Rd.  You emerged and positioned your car immediately on the incorrect side of the road to pass a parked car.  The correct process would be to emerge to a position of safety (behind the parked car) and then after effective observations to proceed past the parked car.  Cheltenham is very effective at testing this driving skill.

Roundabouts

Currently you're not able to read other road users intentions at roundabouts.  An example of this is if a car on or approaching the roundabout is indicating left you're waiting for it to go as opposed to taking your opportunity to proceed.  This is also true for positioning prompts from other drivers.  We only looked at simple roundabouts as you don't currently have the skills to effectively and safely tackle the more complex roundabouts.  Example's of the more complex roundabouts we'll need to cover are the Prestbury and Kingsditch double roundabouts and the spiral roundabouts such as golden valley and McDonalds.  We also weren't able to look at roundabouts with multi-lane approaches.  I anticipate us needing to spend a significant period of time on safely negotiating roundabouts.

Meeting Traffic

When negotiating parked vehicles in situations when there is oncoming traffic you're not always sure when you can go or when you need to stop.  This is a competency that is intensively tested in Cheltenham and one that we need to do further work on.

Mirrors

Whilst on the whole you utilised your mirrors there were occasions where you forgot to do so.  This was particularly true when passing static hazards such as parked vehicles.  If you are deviating from your normal driving position you need to be checking the corresponding mirrors before emerging.

Understanding other road users signals/Anticipation and planning

You're great at noticing hazards as they're developing, a great example of this were the kids as we left your house!  I feel however there's more work to do on fully identifying and understanding how other road users are communicating with you, for example other vehicles brake lights and what they could be alerting you to.  We didn't have the opportunity to discuss the significance and importance of other types of signals such as reversing lights and hazards lights and how these help us anticipate and plan our actions.  You can use this LINK to start thinking about how other vehicles communicate.

Use of speed

You're great at getting up to the appropriate speed for the road.  There were however occasions where you slightly exceeded the speed limit.

Junctions

You don't always select the correct gear when emerging from a junction.  An example of this was not selecting first gear when negotiating closed junctions.  Another example was emerging onto Hewlet Rd from Pitville Circus Rd in 3rd.  We didn't have the opportunity to look at priorities at and negotiating cross roads.