Hi Trucknet, this is my first post so I’ll start by saying I’m Adam and I aspire to be a full time truck driver here in the UK.
A couple of days ago I had my class 2 test and and I thought it went fairly well. I had no majors and thought I’d passed when I got back to the test centre. Turns out I failed due to not checking my left mirror on approach to roundabouts I wasn’t stopping at (When stopping I always give a full mirror and blind spot check) and also for approach speed on roundabouts both of which gave me 3 minors in the same category and enough to fail. The examiner told me I didn’t check that mirror at all on approach and it was a habitual error. The thing I’m most upset with is that my instructors (I had 2 different ones over the 4 days) hadn’t told me to check that mirror on approach, and through the 14 hours of lessons I’d had over the 4 days they hadn’t once picked up on the fact I wasn’t checking that mirror.
Still I’m hopeful I can iron those errors out in no time at all and without the speed and lack of mirror checks I only racked up 4 minors. I’ve contacted the training firm to book a couple of hours and another retest straight afterwards in a couple of weeks time. They’ve quoted me a price of £455 for the 2 hour lesson and test after. Does this seem reasonable? I have to say I was expecting it to be slightly cheaper. As a reference my 4 day course cost me £1450 (4 hours over 3 days + 2 hours and test on final day).
£455 sounds about average for that, maybe a little more than some charge.
Four hours of vehicle use plus a test fee of £115 (works out at £85 per hour).
I’d be raising the issue of the potential failure of the instructors to notice the issue before test, and perhaps negotiate a discount, that is if the issue was there beforehand, and not something that just appeared under test conditions.
Redrum:
my 4 day course cost me £1450 (4 hours over 3 days + 2 hours and test on final day)
Seems a lot for a 4 day course - Did you use a broker or go direct to a training school
I went direct to the training provider, it’s local to me and has a good reputation with the truck drivers I’ve spoken to. Believe it or not I got a quote from another local firm and got quoted £1830, although I do believe it involved more hours driving
What direction were you going at the roundabouts in question ? I.e. Left, ahead or right and which lane did you approach in
And
which box on the DL25 did the examiner mark the faults in
I’m not totally sure on which direction or lane, the examiner didn’t go into that much detail but the faults were marked in box ‘14 Use of mirrors - M/C rear obs: Change direction’. He did tell me to make sure to check the left mirror whenever changing direction/approaching roundabouts so I assume a good near and farside mirror check on approach should sort the problem
Mirror / Direction faults are usually marked at roundabouts on the approach when you don’t have to stop but do not check left mirror as you enter the roundabout. The risk increases if you are in the middle or right hand lane as there may be cars on your left as you proceed. If you had stopped the same fault would be marked as move off safely.
The junctions approach speed faults can be either too slow or too fast approaching the roundabout / junction. My guess in your case is too fast leading to a lack of left mirror as you have so little time due to the speed. Examiners can’t double mark faults for the same event but in the example above the approach and emerge onto the roundabouts are 2 separate events and are therefore assessed separately.
