IAM drives

I've had two sessions with my observer so far. The first was an buttessment, and the 2nd was a 'proper' observed drive. For some reason I've been driving worse than usual on the drive. Towards the end I started doing better though. My observer said that I was skipping lessons as we went along. So I think there's just m-ways, and general practice left.

He didn't seem too impressed with my m-way driving for some reason though. We went on what he called an m-way, but it had NSL signs, I thought it was a d-c. It had two lanes and the limit was 70mph. I started to overtake, and found myself doing 70mph, which wasn't much more than the traffic in the LHL. I was considering aborting, but he said I should stay there because there was a lorry ahead. After a while a queue built up behind me, including a dangerous tailger (van) two cars behind. After a while this van undertook, and came up close behind me. At this moment a gap appeared in the LHL, so I moved over to loose the van. The observer wasn't impressed because I couldn't get back out into the RHL. If I had stayed there I would have had the van driving up my bumper for a very long time. Dispite what he says I think I did the right thing, and I would do the same again. It seems that my observer doesn't try to loose tailgaters, he thinks we can deal with them by slowing earlier etc. Having said that, when he gave his demo drive he didn't leave any extra braking distance when he had a tailgater both infront of him, and behind.

My observer seems better than my last one. He's got four ROSPA Golds, and is an IAM observer. I have improved a bit on the observed drives. I think my main problem was that I was expecting to take roundabouts too fast. What I needed to do was approach them slightly slower. I think it will take a while for me to fully master the system. On the demo drive I thought that some of the gear changes felt slightly rushed.

Some of the roads I went on were great though, I didn't even know they existed.