Newsworthy?

I’m not quite sure why this story of a woman who failed her driving test because she drove through a puddle and splashed a pedestrian is deemed so newsworthy – unless most people don’t know that splashing someone by driving through a puddle can be deemed a criminal act under “Driving without due care and attention”.

I’ve always known about this one though.

Mind you, having been through a fair number of driving tests myself, I know that if the examiner deems a problem severe enough, that’s it, you’ve failed the test. I failed twice for stalling the car at a road junction. Despite the driver in this case saying “And if I’d swerved to avoid the puddle I might have caused an accident.”, I’m sure the examiner would say “If you had to swerve to avoid the puddle, you didn’t see it in time.”. And if the alternative is to cause an accident, then the examiner would have been more likely to mark it as a minor mistake.

As always, the context is key here. Personally, I suspect that the rest of the road was clear when this driver went through the puddle – thus meaning she could have gone round it. Because she didn’t, she wasn’t paying attention and wasn’t properly assessing the risks of the road in front. Ergo, a fail. And if she was going so fast as to splash the water seriously, she should’ve slowed down to minimise that splash. As always, if a situation can be avoided safely, it should be – regardless of whether it’s a cyclist, oncoming traffic, or puddles in the road. That’s just standard defensive driving.

I’m not convinced, personally, of the feasibility of stopping and giving the pedestrian your details – I can understand it if the person has been completely soaked, but it’s one of those things where there are differing degrees of getting soaked.

Do I think it right that this person failed her test? Yes. Do I think it was a harsh reason to fail? Possibly.