Worst driving test route 2019 - what a nightmare!

Worst driving test route 2019. A driving instructor takes a driving test and has a nightmare! due to a baffling cloverleaf roundabout system and a crazy sat nav with attitude. The chaos begins at 10:00 as the sat nav gives me confusing directions that sent me round in circles. I couldn't see the screen very well and the spoken directions make little sense.

The point of this video was that I wanted to see what it was like for a learner driver to take a driving test. It's easy to forget what it's like when you don't know the area like the back of your hand and doing this has given me a lot more sympathy for the majority of my pupils who don't come from Birmingham.

Chapters:

0:00 - Introduction
4:10 - The driving starts
9:48 - The nightmare begins

Here's the Redditch roundabouts calendar I mentioned https://www.redditchadvertiser.co.uk/...

Here's the Redditch Cloverleaf junction https://www.roads.org.uk/interchanges...

Looking back it's easy to explain what was happening but when you're driving, talking, to the camera and doing several other things at once it's not so easy.

What you can see is what I can see - it was a dark day and I had the screen set up for the camera more than myself. I planned on using YouTube's editing tools to brighten the video after I'd uploaded it but they have been removed so I couldn't.

I could hardly see the line so I was going more by the voice and that's what caused the problems. The screen just didn't zoom out enough for me to see the line far enough ahead. The sat nav would not be positioned here for a test, it would be closer to you and the examiner will make sure you can see it.

When the sat nav was saying "Take the exit then keep right" I was already on the road it was talking about - the exit. That's very confusing because if you say "exit" you normally think you'd have to exit one road and join another. When it says "Take the exit" it actually means STAY on the exit.

Imagine two roads running parallel with each other. We'll call the road on the left road A and the road on the right road B. I was on A and it wanted me to take A. Road bends over to the right and touches road B allowing you to go from A to B or B to A. You can alos stay on A or B and not exit which is what the sat nav wanted m to do. When it was saying "take the exit" it should really have said nothing, told me to keep left or to stay in the same lane. I think saying "exit" is confusing when you don't need to change lanes.

Learner drivers struggle with this route because of things I did naturally due to experience. Yes I went the wrong way but that wasn't what pupils struggle with because the examiner would help. It's the unexpectedly short slip roads, tight bends and so many poorly marked roundabouts that learners find hard. That combined with the confusing directions and layouts make this a very hard route in my opinion.

Sorry the video is a little dark but that's just how these cameras are and it was a very dark, overcast day. I'll soon be replacing these cameras so this will no longer be a problem.

In my preview for this video on my community page I mentioned that this video solves a mystery from an old one. I was referring to the video linked in this one about the car driving the wrong way down the dual carriageway. That was in the bit where the sat nav kept sending me round in circles so maybe that's what happened to them and what I meant about me doing well to keep it all going and not make a mistake like that.

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