Hi
I failed my first Cat C test in November with 2 serious faults (doing emergency stop when panicking at amber light, and hitting kerb trying to avoid parked up wagon at a junction) and 9 minors.
Just had a days refresher course and then a test yesterday and passed with 5 minors. Great feeling!
The show me / tell me questions were a doddle - so easy I almost didn’t say one blindingly obvious answer. Then proceeded to do the worst reverse I have ever done, for some unknown reason stayed on full lock ridiculously long and when I checked mirror I didn’t even recognise the view - I could see the ENTIRE target - must have been approaching 90 degrees! Luckily just had enough space to swap lock and got it in without incident. Examiner was nice enough to crack a joke about it which broke the ice, and when I finally hit the road it all went smoothly until a kamikaze motorbike appeared from nowhere on a blind mini roundabout and had to stop half way across. Spent next ten minutes wondering if that was a fail. Then glanced across and thought I saw a diagonal line on his sheet. Didn’t enjoy rest of test!
So was a amazing surprise to hear “congratulations, you’ve passed” at the end. Turns out the diagonal line was an accidental squiggle he made when I hit the brakes ‘to avoid killing that muppet’ (as the examiner put it afterwards). Guess the moral is to not even attempt to look at the sheet!
So, if anyone reading this is learning, or failed first time as I did, be encouraged that it’s not as impossible as it can feel! Main things for me were to treat green traffic lights with suspicion, brake nice and early and to try and stay calm and not get consumed by the stress of the test.
Tim
