A driving instructor spent an entire lesson watching a movie on his phone while another teacher tailgated a car, flashed the vehicle\u2019s lights, and gestured at another motorist, according to complaints to the Road Safety Authority (RSA).<\/p>\n
The RSA said they had been contacted by more than 160 unhappy learner drivers last year about the quality of driving lessons and instruction.<\/p>\n
One person accused their instructor of using a racial slur, making sexualised comments, and joking about \u2018Women\u2019s Aid\u2019 for \u201cbattering [his] car.\u201d<\/p>\n
A copy of their complaint claimed the teacher had said: \u201c\u2018Watch that hand or I\u2019ll have a case against you,\u2019 implying that I had nearly touched him inappropriately, which I absolutely had not.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another learner wrote of receiving threatening text messages from an instructor who said they were going to report them for driving without insurance.<\/p>\n
They added: \u201cA girl has also come out to me saying he would be talking about other girls during driving lessons talking about private body parts with his clients.\u201d<\/p>\n
One resident wrote about repeated issues with a driving instructor parking on a footpath and \u201ccontinually obstructing\u201d people.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is who is teaching our young to drive,\u201d they said. \u201cWorrying to say the least.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of the 161 total complaints, 46 were about conduct or behaviour while 25 related to payment of money or fees.<\/p>\n
There were 21 complaints about the overall quality of training and another 21 about routes or lessons.<\/p>\n
A further 31 learners complained their lessons were not uploaded correctly to an online portal for driver testing, according to RSA records released under FOI.<\/p>\n
Another person complained of a driving instructor who, after a dozen lessons, suddenly started to act in a \u201crude and very agitated manner.\u201d<\/p>\n
They explained: \u201cShe even tried to induce me to make a mistake at the beginning of today’s class, where she asked me to drive through dangerous traffic at a T-junction.\u201d<\/p>\n
The complaint added that at the end of one lesson, they were left \u201cin the rain in a parking lot far from [their] house.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another wrote of being brought straight out onto a dual carriageway on their first lesson even though they didn\u2019t know which pedal did what in the car.<\/p>\n
An email said: \u201cFrom the very first lesson, he was constantly on his phone not paying attention to the road or what I was doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
That was one of a number of complaints about instructors overusing mobiles during lessons.<\/p>\n
A separate complaint said: \u201cThe instructor was watching a movie on his phone. [He] was stuck to his screen.\u201d<\/p>\n
One person wrote about how their lesson was interrupted, supposedly for a toilet break.<\/p>\n
However, the instructor \u201creturned with hot food that smelled strongly of fish and chips.\u201d<\/p>\n
The complaint said: \u201cThis was extremely unprofessional, but I continued the lesson at the time. In the second lesson, he again arrived late and asked me to pull into a car park.<\/p>\n
\u201cI assumed this was to practise manoeuvres, but instead he said he was going to get a coffee and left me sitting alone in the car for over ten minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n
One complaint ran to several pages with a catalogue of issues including the instructor telling the person to drive on the hard shoulder for a lengthy period of time.<\/p>\n
They were also told to practise driving with just one hand on the wheel and said they were given contradictory and confusing feedback.<\/p>\n
Following one incident, the instructor became extremely angry, and the learner driver decided they would get out of the car.<\/p>\n
The complaint alleged: \u201cAfter I exited, he locked the back door, preventing me from retrieving my mobile phone. When I asked him to unlock it, he refused, stating: \u2018You haven\u2019t paid me yet.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked about the records, the RSA said they had nothing to add.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A driving instructor spent an entire lesson watching a movie on his phone while another teacher tailgated a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311826,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-311825","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311825\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}