Our neighbour has a son who attends a special school and is picked up and delivered home by taxi each day. The lady chaperone wears a high viz vest. It must be a health and safety rule as there is no danger in getting the 20 feet from his front door to the car or from the car to the school door the other end. The only other reason I can think of is to boost the self importance of the wearer. A bit like having fog lights on when there is no fog - look at me!

Yes it's those risk assessment officers who are draining the economy dry. Huge expense for what could be replaced by free common sense.

lollipop-persons

These are people who step into moving traffic for a living. High vis trenchcoat therefore makes sense.

AA/RAC

These are people who stand beside unlit motorways fixing cars for a living. See above.

traffic wardens

Providing they don't ticket somebody they're at no greater risk of being flattened than the ordinary citizen. High vis is useful with such vermin though to enable long distance identification.

Driving examiners

These people walk up to a car in a car park and get in it. That's pretty much it. The same can be said of the learner sitting the test and their instructor after the test. In fact, other test centre employees are allowed to get into their own cars in the same car park without wearing high vis.

Like all jobs that of the examiner will have been risk assesed. The risk assesement will have flagged up the possibilty of being hit and consequently injured by a moving vehicle. Its not possible to take the moving vehicles out of the mix so the risk has to be minimised. Hi-viz clothing reduces the risk by making the wearer more noticable. Lets face it ........the blue-lighters, lollipop-persons, AA/RAC, traffic wardens etc etc have been doing something similar for decades. My brother drives some rather large earthmovers for a living and his employers wont even let him in the gate unless he turns up looking like a giant lemon flavoured jelly baby!!!

Fact is employers have a legal duty of care over their employees and that includes the DSA. So why shoudnt they make every possible attempt to make the job as safe as is realistically possible and insist their examiners wear them ?

That isn't quite how they see it. The truth is that employers are scared witless of being sued for a H&S violation. So rather than use common sense, and decide that the risk is very low, they opt on the side of extreme caution. even if the risk is miniscule, they have to be seen to take due precautions. I worked in an office, for a company involved in oil exploration. We had regular talks such as "How to deal with high winds". They were for the most part a complete waste of time and energy, and very patronising. So when we did eventually have a near miss - someone tripped over a computer cable - there was elation. Some of this stuff is very important - storing boxes on shelves safely - but it can go overboard. The irony is that one day I parked my car, got out, and fell over backwards. It was painful and I could have been seriously injured. The car park had been cleared of snow leaving an ice rink like surface. It was very dangerous. When I spoke to the woman responsible for the car park, she could not care less. And the company I worked for were not bothered. They were not liable, because someone else managed the car park. So really it is nothing to do with H&S, it is all about avoiding prosecution.

In a similar vein, I work for a big company on government contracts. The work we do is massively inefficient. Something that would take 30 minutes at most in a normal company takes us 1 week. And you and I pay for that. The inefficiency comes from the ridiculous processes we have to follow. And that is because our product is safety related. If it fails, lives could be lost. But the processes we have do not make it more reliable. In practice they mainly make it harder to make. They are there so my company cannot be prosecuted. Their lawyers can demonstrate that they have effective processes in place to ensure high quality, so they cannot be prosecuted. The fact that they are not effective is irrelevant. High paid lawyers will argue that they are, and who are engineers to argue with these overpaid silver tongued parasites.

Who else took a motorcycle test where you had to circle the block while being watched by the examiner?

They'd jump out in front of you for the emergency stop! No such thing as hi-vis in those days.

I personaly cant comment on others but if the use of a hi-viv reduces the risk of me having to spend the rest of my life in bed eating all my meals through a straw unable to even scratch my ar** by just 0.001% I will wear it all day long.

But I also appreciate that others may not see things the way I do .

Yes Doc, they do allow "private runners" without duals on test because that's the law, not the DSA wrapping them in cotton wool, but the examiners won't take them on the difficult test routes where, for example, the candidate is asked to turn right across busy lanes of traffic. Also, they will get a good looking over, tyres, lights, seat belts, mirrors, tax disc, etc anything wrong and the test is off and the candidate loses their test fee.

H & S rules.OK. I was told a remarkable story about a Driving Examiner. A caring Father attended with his daughter for her driving test. Confident that she was a good, safe and careful driver he was going to wait for her return. The Examiner was in the car with her when he realised he had forgotten something. He got out, put his clipboard on the roof and went back into the test centre. The clipboard slid off the roof and my friend retrieved it, and it had come open at his daughters test details. He was horrified to read that she was marked down as a fail, before the test had taken place. He photographed the sheet with his mobile and replaced the clipboard. The test went ahead and they returned. Approaching the car the Father could see his daughter was upset. He confronted the Examiner and was told she failed on this and that. He then produced his mobile and showed the Examiner the sheet marked as a fail at 10am, a photograph of them leaving the test centre at 10.05am and asked him to re-consider his decision. The Examiner could hardly speak for embarrasment and mumbled something about quotas, then gave his daughter a pass. Makes you think, doesn't it. Cheers Concrete

Yes it's true, there are quotas - the DSA call them variances.

Each indiviual DE has to maintain their personal pass rate of candidates tested to within plus or minus ten percent of the pass rate of their supervising driving examiner (SDE). The variances have to be collated and registered on thursdays and fridays.

If the DE that you get has passed too many candidates earlier in the week........?

So don't book a driving test on a thursday or a friday.

Known in instructor jargon as a "walk back" .

Never had one in seven years working as an instructor.

I only had perhaps one occasion when the vehicle arrived back with the Examiner driving.......but then, most of my instruction involved Cat C and C+E...only the occasional B, and some D....

but, it does happen.

The so-called 'quota' system is a myth.

Examiners are subject to performance appraisals like all government employed workers.

All part of a system to ensure Examiners [and instructors] are maintaining standards of instruction or assessment.

Quality control?

So, sue away if one thinks one is subject to a lottery.

If so can you explain why the national car B pass rate percentage has remained virtually static for something like 25 years? It is a source of much amusement amongst instructors every year when the figures for the preceding year is published.

Everything else has changed - cars, teaching methods, test routes, instructors, examiners, traffic - but the pass rate stays the same, statistically,how likely is that to happen?

Considering the examples of incompetent driving one sees on a daily basis, (often by people so young they must have a)passed the theory test or are b) driving without a full licence) the test isn't consistent in weeding out inadequate candidates.