Driving tests: Learning the hard way

DEATH, when it came to domestic servant May Nelson, was instantaneous. And death came on the evening of Saturday, 8 September, 1934, when she was crossing Ayr Road en route to her employer's house in Prestwick.

• Better luck next time: A learner driver who has just failed his driving test. Picture: Getty

While the Bible describes death as riding a white horse, for Ms Nelson, 31, he favoured a small motor car, driven by an Ayr man at such speed that the life was knocked right out of her. As the press recorded at the time, the deceased "was the daughter of working folk, who reside at Redgat

It was an average weekend for road fatalities in Scotland – which meant it was busy. In Brechin, at 8.45 pm that same night, Andrew Gardiner crashed his motorcycle and sidecar into a female cyclist, spinning his machine over and dashing his head on the ground. He died in the local infirmary, just before midnight. Mr Gardiner was a professional chauffeur to Mr W. Shaw Adamson, who dwelt at Careston Castle. We leave his victim, Miss Nan Bushnell, lying in the same infirmary, with severe injuries.

In Edinburgh young David Stenhouse, also a cyclist, was a little luckier. He was knocked down on the Sunday by a car at the junction of Kirk Brae Road and Mayfield Road, but although he sustained head injuries, his condition was reported the following morning as "fairly comfortable".

This single clipping from The Scotsman, dated 10 September, 1934, and headlined: Road Casualties helps to explain why, after years of mounting road fatalities, the government finally insisted that an ability to drive required more than just an access to a set of car keys. The introduction of the new Road Traffic Act that year made a driving test conducted by independent examiners compulsory from 1 June, 1935. When introducing the act in the House of Commons, Mr Leslie Hore-Belisha, the Transport minister, said: "There is bound to be a great deal of criticism but these examiners have been instructed to be fair to candidates and at the same time fair to the public. We are looking forward to a period when every driver on the road will be a man of equal prowess, just as every engine driver is. Too long have we put up with the assumption that it is sufficient qualification to drive a motor car to pay five shillings for a licence."

In 1934, Ramsay MacDonald and his starched white collar occupied No 10 Downing Street; at the La Scala cinemas, audiences clapped while Clark Gable fell in love with Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night; elsewhere, Agatha Christie rested her fountain pen for all of 15 minutes after publishing Murder On The Orient Express. Meanwhile, the death toll on the nation's roads was staggering. May Nelson and Andrew Gardiner were just two of 7,343 men, women and children killed on the nation's road at a time when there were only 1.5 million cars. Today there are 34 million cars and in 2008, 2,538 people were killed, a third of the figure from 75 years ago. Back in 1934, it was the frequent death of children – who, lacking playgrounds, played kick the can, tig and football in the road, scooping up jerseys dumped down as goalposts whenever a car came into view – that most troubled the politicians. During that September weekend in Falkirk, John Blair, a nine-year-old was out playing with his two friends at the foot of Tanner's Brae, when he darted out in front of a "motorbus". He survived until the following day.

The average Scots driver, like the average British driver, would have been taught the rudiments of clutch, gears and steering in a couple of hours by his father or friend. Then he would stride off to purchase for a few shillings the sulphur yellow document which, since driver registration was introduced in 1903, entitled him at a stroke to "drive a motor car or motor cycle". Later licences allowed the holder to drive a vehicle of "any class or description". There was no such thing as a speed limit, beyond the engine's capacity. But 1934 was the watershed moment: never again would the road deaths lap so high and driving be so unrestricted.

The following year the new Highway Code was introduced and 15 million copies were distributed to households across Britain, the greatest distribution of its kind by a government department. Pedestrian crossings were also introduced, first in London where they reduced deaths by 31 per cent and injuries by 16 per cent. Yet the greatest safety feature was the new breed of examiners, who took part in a three-day conference at the Ministry of Transport in London and were then dispatched to take charge of their geographical area. Southern Scotland's area supervisor was a Mr G.C. Howarth, based in Edinburgh, while Northern Scotland's area supervisor was a Mr G.Scott, based in Aberdeen. At first there were 250 instructors, of whom 30 – controversially, at that time – were women.

The sexist dismissal of female drivers had not yet reached its zenith, largely because there were so few on the road, however this did not stop men from taking umbridge at the thought of having their skills assessed by a woman. It was a notion, quickly slapped down by the government. "No man will have the right to be tested by a man, and no woman will have the right to be tested by a woman," said Mr. A. R. V. Robinson, the Deputy Secretary of the Ministry of Transport. "I cannot see any objection that can be taken to a woman examining a man. The examiners have been chosen because of their knowledge of the work they have to do, and they have satisfied the Minister that they are qualified to carry out that work."

When testing was first introduced on a voluntary basis, Scottish drivers stalled and were slow to roll forward. "Are motorists suffering from Test-Shyness?" asked The Scotsman in June 1935. The Southern Scottish area office in Palmerston Place in Edinburgh was very quiet, with Mr Howarth patiently explaining that drivers should come forward to avoid a bottleneck when the test becomes compulsory. "The tests," as reported by the The Scotsman, "will likely include an examination in the knowledge of the highway code; the ability to start the engine and move away straight ahead or at an angle; overtake, meet, or cross the path of another vehicle; stop the vehicle in an emergency; drive the car backwards into a limited opening; a knowledge of road signals; and the ability to act promptly when they are given."

This paper attempted to reassure concerned readers not to be fearful, with one reporter writing: "Having been through it I can assure motorists, men and women, that while the examination is thorough and is devised to show whether the applicant can handle the car, have it always under control, knows the rules and signs of the road, and can use them and act upon them, and can react quickly to an emergency it is not by any means unduly exacting, and is carried through in a manner that does not disturb or in any way tend to fluster the applicant."

The biggest shock for learners in 1935 will be familiar to modern drivers. "It has one surprise moment," wrote the correspondent. "notice of which is given the candidate before the test begins, though there is no indication, of course, given as to when it may be. That is when the examiner suddenly gives a hand clap to see how quickly the candidate can stop the car."

Despite the government's determination that the answer to reducing deaths on the road was more skilled beginners, others argued what was the point if the vast majority of drivers – who'd had their licences for years – were not required to sit the test. (Only drivers who applied for a licence after 1 April, 1934, were required to sit the test.) However, the government insisted that anyone found guilty of dangerous driving should, as well as being fined, be forced to sit the new test.

The introduction of the driving test helped to create two new jobs, the professional examiner and instructor, although this was viewed as part-time work, busy during the spring and summer "driving season" and barren during the wet winter.

Yet the experiences between new drivers today and yesterday are not that different as an extract from this article on learning to drive by a Miss E.N.A and published in The Scotsman in 1935 makes clear:

"A veil is drawn over the rest of the driving lesson. I shall not even dwell on that painful incident when, emerging from a side road on to a main road the pupil paused, scanned the horizon to the left – and forgot to look to the right. Yes there was a car coming…

"You'll never do that a second time" said an encouraging friend, later.

"You mean after such a fright I shall not forget," I said hopefully

"No, dear. You'll be dead."

What's it like to sit a driving test today?

THE worst part is the waiting. Those five long minutes in a drab, grey waiting room, during which you sit, nervously clutching your provisional licence and your car keys, trying to remember how you would check the tyres to ensure that they have sufficient tread depth (1.6mm of tread depth across the central of the breadth of the tyre and around the entire outer circumference, since you ask).

It's enough to make even the calmest of learner drivers quail, and I should know. I've done it twice.

Driving tests, I am reliably informed by everyone I have ever made the mistake of mentioning that I'm sitting one to, have changed. Once upon a time it seemed that all you had to do was turn up and demonstrate you could make it to the end of the street without running over any cats, dogs or members of your own family, and that laminated licence was yours.

Now you must know your way around the engine, reverse round corners with balletic prowess, bomb over an expressway, negotiate double mini roundabouts, complete a written test and a hazard perception course, all while bearing in mind that you will be marked down for things like hesitancy, driving too slowly, and sneezing*.

The first time I failed because I turned too fast out of a junction. The second time I failed because I mounted the pavement during a parallel park, a manoeuvre I have been executing perfectly for months. I am a good driver. Honest. It has taken me time to learn, but my age (I'm 32), the fact that I've been taking lessons for nine months and owning my own car to practice in all mean I can drive around town without posing a sizeable threat to national security.

But sitting a driving test, particularly in today's hyper-critical, fast-moving world, is nerve-wracking stuff. Excruciating, nail-biting and frustrating, not least because the first thought that goes through your brain after the nice man in the yellow tabard turns to you and shakes his head sadly is not, "Oh, no", but, "Oh, Christ, that's another 200 of lessons down the drain".

So that is why, even though I have a third test booked, no-one aside from my instructor and I knows when it is. It's self-preservation really, a way of keeping the pressure off while I'm executing the minutiae of a perfect three-point turn. If I pass, I'll let you know.

*Not really, it just feels like it.