Ben – Swanston Edinburgh
After being Ben’s brothers driving instructor it was now time to see if Ben could get on the road as soon as possible. The housing estate behind Ben’s house I actually use regularly for teaching people how to drive. The estate includes a huge number of different junctions with a good range of gradients and angles. I find that once people can confidently drive around this estate they can progress through the rest of the driving quickly.
As well as doing regular driving lessons Ben was insured on his mum and dad’s car which meant he could practice regularly driving around Edinburgh whenever he was going anywhere. This really helped as it meant that anything that we learnt he could go and perfect and get really good at for the next time we went out.
During the summer holidays Ben was pretty flexible with when he was free to go out driving, but as always that time flys by, before we knew it Ben was returning to school and waiting to hear what his sixth-year timetable was going to be like. Along with school, Ben had a very busy schedule with hockey. We remained organised and managed to find times to fit driving lessons in, we were out at a range of different times which I think actually helped speed up the learning as we had a variety of traffic situations, bus lanes being in action sometimes and other times being able to drive through them.
After successfully sitting and passing his driving test we were fast pulling everything together which was really exciting. Ben started watching the videos on my website to consolidate his learning and we got a driving test booked.
Ben’s test was straight after another test I had, when I picked Ben up I had the news that Syd had passed his driving test that morning, not sure if that was more pressure or a positive boost. I was very confident in Ben’s skills. We left his house in Swanston and headed to the test centre practising a little bit of everything on the way.
I was right to be confident Ben passed on his first attempt, well done. Ben is now to come and go from Swanston as much as he likes now.
