DriveTest.ca website even says the camera shouldn’t be used for assisting, but this guy seems to want her to look at the tracing drawn by the rear camera to calculate the positioning and the turns she’s supposed to make. That sounds crazy to me. Should she look for another instructor? She was recommended this one by colleagues in her ESL school. This is for the G2 road test by the way.
Edit: I get that it’s useful to have the camera, but I guess what you are missing is that she’s not learning how to do it, she knows, she wants to know how to do it in the way the G2 tester expects her to do it.
I know what DriveTest says, and I’m sure some or all of the testers follow that rule, but frankly, it’s pretty dumb. Many vehicles are built in a way where it is incredibly unsafe to back up without using the camera. It’s one of many reasons why they’ve been legally required in all new vehicles for more than 5 years. DriveTest seriously needs to modernize their testing criteria.
This instructor is teaching your mom how to drive, not how to pass the road test. I personally think that’s (mostly) a good thing, but you should probably talk to the driving instructor about this discrepancy.
I thought that in the best case scenario the dude was just trying to get her to do the parallel parking, but honestly, if in the test she’s not supposed to use the camera (and I’ve read many people saying some testers even put their clipboards over it), why would he use this shortcut with her?
Thanks for your input.
It’s not a shortcut. It’s the proper way to park. Just like power steering and braking are just part of the way we drive nowadays. Imagine if the testers made you turn off power steering for the test. It would be pretty stupid, because even though it’s technically possible, cars with power steering are not designed to be driven without it.
Your mom is probably going to have to learn to park without the camera. It’s not correct, it’s not good, but it is what it is. But everyone who insists that cameras are just a crutch and that back in their day they “drove backwards uphill to school both ways in the snow with their eyes closed” will be lucky if they never hit someone or something while backing up.
Because when you are learning to ride a bike you have training wheels.
I learned without a camera.
Now I use the camera all the time. It’s a great additional tool! You still need to check mirrors and everything else though.
I’d personally want her to learn without using a rear camera, but once she has experience, anything to make parking safer/easier is a good thing.
At one point cars didn’t have seatbelts, it’s now a requirement for cars to have seatbelts and for drivers to use them. The exact same is true for backup cameras. They are required on all new cars and not using them is like not using your seatbelt.
Now it’s definitely helpful to know how to backup your car without a rear camera in case you ever need to do it in a car without one, but I’d say there’s nothing wrong with instructing new drivers to use a legally required safety feature.
Well, one thing wrong with it is that the organization that certifies drivers explicitly forbids it, and not only on paper, but in practice too, it seems. If it wasn’t for that, I’d be open to accept that we can do it this way from now on.
If it’s not an accelerated course (as in, there will be another time your mother can try parallel parking) then in later lessons she can use the mirrors and wheel position more than the camera.
It is good for her to know that it would be better not to use the camera for the test. My car has no backup cam, and I’ve needed it 3 or 4 times in the last few years.
Absolutely not acceptable. Cameras and other sensors are “Parking Aids” and “Driver Assist Aids”. They were not designed to replace the skills of the driver. You must learn how to drive properly first then you can use them to make your life a little easier later on. What is she going to do in the winter when her backup camera is covered in snow/ice/salt? Not drive because she never learned how to use mirrors and/or turn her head? Hell, my backup camera is useless in the rain never mind actual bad weather.
That was my thought process.
Apparently the dude asked her how she has ever done it without a camera 🤦♂️
She has done it for 30 years before cars came with them.
Then he’s an idiot who shouldn’t be be teaching anyone how to drive. This is how we end up with so many shitty drivers on the road. People who rely too heavily on electronic systems instead of actual skill. Have you ever paid attention to the little lights on people’s wing mirrors (blind spot monitoring) when they pass you on the highway… You think 8-10ft is a safe distance to cut back in front of someone when you’re travelling 100+ on the highway? NO!
