The Cockpit Drill
The Cockpit Drill
Are ALL the doors shut and secure?
The last thing you want is a door flying open while you are driving.
Ensure child locks are used when carrying children in the rear.
Adjust your seat so that you can reach the foot controls comfortably and that you are relaxed in the seat. See vid below for method to set seat up.
Once the base of the seat has been set up, then set up the upright part of the seat. This needs to be reasonably upright to avoid your eyes becoming tired but also to give you a better vision throughout your drive. You should be able to reach the steering and have a bend in your elbows.
By law, everyone in a car has to wear a seatbelt unless they carry a medical exemption certificate. While putting on the seatbelt also ensure you adjust the headrest to avoid whiplash injuries.
https://www.gov.uk/seat-belts-law
By law, the driver is responsible for any passenger under the age of 14 who is not wearing a seatbelt.
In your normal driving position you should be able to see all four side of the rear window in your interior mirror.
The door mirrors need to be set up to allow maximum vision to your sides to reduce the amount of blind spots.
All pupils should have been taught that the Cockpit drill is the first thing they should do when entering a vehicle.
If they can't reach the controls properly they put themselves and others at risk.
If they can't see in their blind spots because they haven't set their mirrors up correctly, they put themselves and others at risk.
So it's no surprise that an examiner will fault them for needing to change them part way through the test.
In addition, instructors should be ensuring that if a pupil has the need to move their mirrors or remove their seatbelt to carry out any reverse manoeuvre, they MUST be put back to their normal driving position and seatbelt put back on before continuing with their journey. Failure to do so will more than likely result in a test fail being recorded. And definitely if the seatbelt is not put back on.
Obviously and examiner cannot see the precise level of visibility that the pupil can see when they move their mirror for a manoeuvre, but they will be able to gauge how much it has been moved by, and if they deem it quite a considerable amount then it's highly likely that if they swapped seats, the mirror will more than likely be pointing toward the floor which in turn will not allow the pupil to see cyclists or other vehicle coming alongside them for the remainder of the test journey.
