A very warm welcome to the latest edition of the podcast series from Project EDWARD - my role in the Safe System - that will be running through 2024. This time we welcome a great friend of Project EDWARD, Terry Cook: a driving instructor who runs the Instructor Podcast and the Five Minute Theory Test.

And a very warm welcome to the latest edition of my role in the Safe System, the podcast series from Project Edward that will be running through 2024. And I'm thrilled to have on board a great friend of Project Edward, who is Terry Cook. And I'm a bit embarrassed because Terry Cook's far better at podcasting than I am. Terry, welcome along to the programme. Let me give a few more accolades. So you are a driving instructor. You run the instructor podcast, the five minute theory test. You organise conferences, you write in magazines. There's a lot going on for you. So thank you for sparing us the time to jump on our podcast. How's things?

Things are great, James, and thank you for that warm welcome. I think you're overselling it slightly, but I'll take it. And yeah, I can always make time for Project Edward, especially your good self.

That's very nice to hear. Thank you. As you know, we're talking about the safe system, so we tend to start every conversation by looking at different people and their roles in the safe system. Can you then therefore help us with yours? How do you see your role in the safe system?

Well, I've been stewing over this for quite a while. What the role of a driving instructor is in the safe system, and going on epic monologues, try to work out what's what. I keep going back to a review that I had as a driving instructor about six years ago. I think it was where someone left me this lovely review. And then at the end of it, it simply said, terry doesn't just teach people to pass a test, it teaches them not to crash and die. And I thought, while something may be slightly comical in its tone, it's accurate. That's what we do. That's at the core of what we do. It's not about, or at least it's evolving. It used to be about teaching people to pass a test, and we're evolving so that it's not just about passing a test anymore. It's about teaching you how to be safe on the roads afterwards so that you don't, as the reviewer eloquently put it, crash and die.

So does that allow you to find your place as the little Jiminy cricket on somebody's shoulder once they've passed their test and hopefully staying there as that little prick of conscience for some years afterwards? And if so, how do you do it?

That's something I've been debating for a long time. It's something I used to talk about a lot, having Terry on your shoulder. I used to say like that. And it used to help people. I used to have people going on a test, for example, and they come back and they'd be like, yeah, I had you on my shoulder. And I'm like, now I'm at a point where I think, I don't want me on the shoulder. I want to create independent, curious drivers that make decisions without having to think back to what I told them. And that doesn't mean I can't impart knowledge or wisdom. I'm very knowledgeable person, obviously, but it doesn't mean I can't offer insights and help. But I think the bigger goal is to create drivers that think, smart drivers that know how to make choices. Because we can teach how to use a clutch, we can teach how to steer or what to do in this situation. But the problem is, within a lifetime of driving, you come up on so many different situations that we can't possibly get you into because they'll be random. I can't hire horses to run out in front of you.

I can't hire has happened to me recently, a cow to stand in the middle of the road. So we have to teach learner drivers that then become drivers, how to make decisions in these situations and make the best decision they can in that situation. And we do that by asking them questions, by getting them thinking, by making it. So it's not just driving, we'll drive and we'll also have conversations and I'll ask, what would you do in this situation? What will you do when you've got your friends signed back of their car and they're putting pressure on you to overtake? What would you do when your dad sat next to you and your dad's saying, go in that space, go in that space, or someone's chopping at you, but around about what do you do in those situations and getting them thinking? That's the big thing we're after. So whilst I'm not adverse to someone having a little me sat on the shoulder, I think the bigger thing is we want to create those independent thinking drivers.

Let's look at the system within which you operate. So the whole of the driver learning process and everything that's involved in it. Simple question to start with. Is it fit for purpose?

No, there's elements of it. I think the whole system could do with overhaul the testing aspect of it, of both the theory and the driving, the way we get licences after the test and retesting and stuff like that. But also the way that instructors teach and the way that instructors are developed and taught because the same problems learners might face in learning to drive in that you don't need to be taught by someone that knows what they're doing. You just need to have someone that's been driving for three years sat next to you. You can learn to be an instructor without having that same sort of quality supervision and quality input. So I think that across the board it could do with a huge overall in pretty much every sector. So is it fit for purpose? Maybe I'm being a tiny bit harsh, but no.

Well, in which case, let's try and think what needs to change then what the different components are. Because we have that opportunity, we can be in an ideal world. What would you want to change? So what would be the first thing that you think would make a difference in the quality and relevance that you can give to your students?

I think there's a lot of different places we could start, and I'm not 100% sure where the right one place to be or what the exact right change would be, but I would like to see learners having to do a minimum period of not lessons, but time. So it doesn't necessarily have to be like 40 hours or 60 hours or anything like that, but it has to be done maybe over a twelve month period. You have to do so many in each quarter of the year so that you experience different scenarios. I spoke before about the different scenarios people might experience while they're driving. Well, if you learn to drive in the summer, the chances are you're not getting any nighttime driving. So you pass in September or August and two months later you're driving in the dark for the first time, which is a completely different kettle of fish. So we want to give people as many different scenarios as possible. So by enforcing some of that would be excellent, the same way we could enforce. It's difficult to do but enforce motorway driving before you are allowed to go on a motorway. I think that there should be some things that are enforced and mandated, and I think that if we could put that into learning process, that will help show some of the learner drivers what's important and also help show some of the instructors what's important.

But if that would be helpful, why isn't it already done? Because there is the opportunity for some learners to go on the motorway, isn't there? But they don't have to. So why isn't it already mandatory?

It's largely about mindset, so it depends where we're looking at. If you're looking at learner drivers, from my experience, I would say 90% of the people that I work with want to practise more ways they want to practise slip roads on stool carriageways, another good example, because a lot of the dual carriage in my areas don't have slip roads, so they want to practise these different things that they won't come across on a driving test because they want to be safe learners. The problem is the 10% that don't want to do that because they're focused on passing a test. And a lot of that comes from the parental pressure, which is, well, back in my day, I passed in 10 hours and I've never had a crash, so everything must be safe and rosy and all that kind of nonsense. So even from the 90% that want to do it, there's still a big chunk of that that are having to fight the parents and that I have to have discussions with parents about sometimes. But then you flip to the other side of driving instructors. Their reluctance to push for that or to change for that sometimes is because they're having that fight with some of their students.

So because they're having that argument with some of their students, it falls back to, well, we don't have to, why should we? This is harder for me, that kind of stuff. So there's some instructors that take that and then when you look at higher up above that, even if you put that into this isn't my fault, so this wrong. But even if you put that into a political sense, how many voters are going to vote for, well, you have to do this or you have to retake a driving test every five years, for example. Imagine putting that into a political manifesto. That's not going to go down well. So I think that there's all different kind of battles there. But what I find is when I offer that to students and I say 90% of it bite my hand off, well, that's encouraging.

Let's now move away and just from the student drivers themselves and where appropriate, their parents, and just start finding out who you are in contact with. The word is stakeholders or partners. But I don't like those words, who are important. I mean, does the academic world have a good bearing on what driving instructors are doing? Do you follow the latest research and who's saying what about things like graduated driver licencing or behaviour change?

It's a really good question because there are some driving instructors that are awesome with this stuff. There are some driving instructors that they've got the finger on the pulse in terms of the road safety sector, in terms of the academic sector and they bring that into lessons. So we'll talk about the higher levels of the goals for driver education matrix. We'll have those conversations I mentioned before about what you'll do after. We'll come into the car with various statistics and some of the latest ideas and they'll attend conferences. You mentioned conferences before, people like Liz Box and David Crundall, and these are awesome people from within your sector, but not everyone does that. I can compare this back to the learnings drive aspect, because you don't have to do more with. Not everyone's going to do more with. So because we don't have to have our finger on the pulse of road safe, not everyone's going to. I believe we should. It's a project I'm launching this year. Driving instructors to vision zero is aim to bridge that gap, to provide more information to instructors, to make it more relevant, to make it so that we can buy in more and actually utilise it.

But even with that, I'm already facing some resistance from instructors or the idea of why should we also face a little bit of resistance from some of the road safety sector of well, you guys aren't doing it, why should we come to you? So my goal there is to meet in the middle, but we should be, and a lot of instructors are, and I would encourage anyone that's listening that's maybe going for lessons to look for those instructors that are, because if you get that kind of input, if you get that kind of role in your lessons, you're going to be a hell of a lot safer after.

Let's look beyond the learner driver, because there's a big move for refresher driver training, perhaps particularly for folks like me who are knocking on a bit and who may not have had any form of refresher training for decades, if at all. Is that an opportunity? And what safety benefits can you see for that? And is it a business opportunity for driving instructors as well?

100% it's a business opportunity. I started a little project a little while ago with my little driving school of. I opened up my Wednesday evenings and I told all of my students, everyone that come in, that if you have a parent or a close friend that wants a free lesson on a Wednesday evening, an hour long, that can be an assessment of their driving, let me know. And there were a handful of people that took me up on it. They came and had an assessment lesson, some took the feedback and went off and hopefully applied it. Some took the feedback and were offended and we're like, well, this is all nonsense. And some took the feedback and then came back with further lessons. So even just within the idea of someone running a driving school, there is opportunity there. Because refresher lessons are helpful. I still have them. Once a year I go for as a driving instructor. Once a year I'll try and find another instructor to assess my driving. So I think there's definitely areas of opportunity there, as if anything that can met with resistance. But yeah, whether it's mandated, which I don't ever think it will be, but that would be a goal, I suppose.

But as instructors, it's something we can offer, and should offer, in my opinion.

Let's talk finally, if we may, about driving instructor mental health, because there's a lot of emphasis that's been looked at, student well being. But I'm just imagining you having a busy day of driving, instructing, and lots of others will be doing the same thing. You may have stressful occasions, a lot of it can be very stressful. The last student goes, you head home, there may be no one that you can talk to at home, and you're on your own and you have to do it all again tomorrow. Let's just talk about how you deal with that and what help there might be.

There is help. This is one of the amazing things that I spoke before about our industry evolving, and there never used to be help, and now there is. Now there's communities. Again, I'll use my example of the podcast iron you mentioned at the beginning, the instructor podcast, that was partly created to create a community, and it has created a community of people that can talk or just switch on a podcast and listen to like minded people. But there's also been changes. For example, driving instructor day, March 16, that was again created to look at the positivity of our industry, because as you mentioned, it can be quite negative. People drive differently behind a learner car than they do a real car or real car, you know what I mean? So they drive differently in those scenarios, and it can be quite pressureful and it can be quite negative, especially whenever you didn't fail a test. It's a horrible feeling. So driving instructor day on March 16 was created to celebrate some of that positivity and have a positive day. Then we had another project start recently called the ADi Walkback, which is the 13th every month where driving instructors locally getting together and going for walks, aiming to build that community, which is an amazing thing.

And that was created by Chris Benson of the driving instructor. Creative slots of it. And then there's other people I'm going to mention as well people in the mindfulness and the mental health first aid space, like Sophie Thompson, Sam Harper, Emma Cottington, that are bringing these mindset and mindfulness skills into our industry, that if a drive instructor is really struggling, we can reach out to these people for help. So I think that the big thing is community, and there are options within our industry that have never been there before, which is just a wonderful time to be an instructor in many ways.

Finally, Terry, then, just an opportunity. Imagine your Rhodes minister for the day. The safe system is top of your agenda. What three things might you do to assist in better understanding and implementation of the safe system and getting us all heading towards vision zero?

I think there has to be things mandated. I think that we're at that point now where people aren't going to take action without things being mandated. So I think retesting would be a big one if I could introduce retesting. So whether that'll be every five years, ten years, I'm not sure, but I think there'd be some form of retesting. I think graduated licencing would be a way forward and I think a massive overhaul of the way that driving instructors are trained, because we need to be at our best to help the 17 year olds. I'll go back to what that review said at the start. We need to be at our best to help those 17 year olds not crash and die after their test. So we have to be better. And I include myself in that because we can all improve.

Terry Cook, thank you so much for joining us on our project Edward 2024 podcast, the Safe System. My role in the safe system. Next time we're going to be joined by Sima Yalamanchili, who's a general surgeon and clinical research fellow at Imperial College London at their Institute of Global Health and Innovation. And we'll be looking at greater sharing of collision data and medical information about crash victims. What that could lead to in terms of a better understanding of the causes and the costs, both human and financial, of death and injury on our roads, and therefore work towards improving safety. So do join us for that. But for now, from me, James Larkhirst and the project Edward team. It's a big thank you to Terry Cook and Cheerio for now.