From police driver to engineering team manager, Iain’s career has varied widely over the past three decades. Here he explains how such eclectic work experiences led to his current career – being a driving instructor and the owner of The Wee Red Car that operates out of Inverurie, Scotland.
Crucially, Iain reveals why he is so committed to ensuring that everyone – whether they’re neurotypical or neurodiverse – should get the opportunity to learn to drive.
Why did you make the move into instructing?
There were two key factors. First, I gained an advanced qualification for driving when I was in the police back in the 1990s. Then, I worked as an engineer in Oil and Gas and after leaving that sector, I realised that I had transferable skills from my time mentoring people. In particular, I enjoyed one-to-ones with my team members – and that’s the setup when you’re instructing in a car.
Also, I’ve always enjoyed working with individuals who are looking to learn a skill, who care about what they are doing. With driving instructing, you’ve already got a ‘captive audience’ who is receptive to what you want to teach them. So, for me, instructing was a really good fit.
How did you start out on your ADI career?
I went independent immediately on the advice of my ADI tutor who had started out with a franchise. He said it was actually his biggest mistake because the company he was working for did not consider where he was based in Scotland. The area the company covered – and still covers – stretches about 150 miles from end to end!
It means you could be giving lessons to someone 50 miles away with the company not giving you enough time to get there. However, as an independent, almost all of my clientele are within a 15-mile radius.
What is your teaching style?
To take it at the student’s pace and adapt my approach to whatever works for them. For instance, this can mean drawing pictures on a whiteboard to explain how to navigate roundabouts. In some cases, I’ll pull up at the side of the road with the learner near a roundabout so we can observe together. Sometimes, we’ll even swap over with me as the learner and them instructing me on when it is safe to go. Having such an adaptable approach really helps people learn.
What motivated you to help and support neurodiverse people to learn to drive?
It’s because of my daughter who has high functioning autism. She is very capable and has a degree but she has no filter when it comes to the truth – it’s great! – and I had to help her through various things when she was growing up. Also, my wife works with autistic adults and others with more severe learning difficulties.
This inspired me to start down the route of special education. I did training courses on ADHD and autism with renowned trainer Dr Julia Malkin MBE. From there, I began advertising my instructing as being very visual if it needed to be and I could also go at a slower pace whenever required. It’s about getting neurodiverse people through their test – letting them see the world that neurotypicals have access to in a car is magic – and it’s something they can do so they can join the rest of us.
For me, helping those who perhaps need a little extra assistance, time and patience has been very rewarding.
How has being a police driver in the past informed your instructing today?
It helps me get across to students how important safe driving is. You need to understand that I had first-hand experience of the worst carnage imaginable on our roads when I was working for the police. I use this knowledge and experience to manage learners who just won’t listen to being told to slow down. If they continue to do their own thing, then I will explain to them exactly what can happen when it goes wrong – and they listen.
“The worst incident I attended as a police driver was where two young men had died in a crash. We had to hose down 300 metres of road to get rid of the blood after we’d picked up the human remains … I don’t want any learner to end up like that; it’s why I put safe driving at the forefront of everything I do.”
What’s your favourite part of the job?
Seeing when the penny finally drops. That moment you see the pieces fall into place and all of a sudden, I can shut up – and they’re just driving! I remember one young guy who said he was very nervous and asked if I could keep talking to him while he was driving – so I did. But after about five sessions, I asked him: “Do you realise you’ve been driving for the last 20 minutes and I haven’t talked once?”. Once he digested that, he realised: “Maybe I can do this!”.
What’s your least favourite part?
Trying to manage people’s expectations about getting a test. The current waiting time here is around five months. And if you do what the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency want you to do – to not book a test until the learner is ready – then how do you justify to your student another five months of lessons when they’re already ready for the test? Managing expectations is difficult because my learners can get so frustrated as they need their licence by a certain month because they’re, say, going to uni.
What advice would you give to students to ensure they get the best out of lessons?
I would say trust me that I’m going to keep you safe. I want them to try when I tell them that they are ready to try something. For instance, I remember a learner who was struggling to work the gap at a roundabout and they’d just sit there – even though they were at the stage where they could see it was okay to go but they didn’t want to. I said to them that if they go, I would protect them, the car and other road users from harm. This attitude gives them the confidence to try.
If you could change one thing about the industry, what would it be and why?
If we could get tests in five to 10 weeks, it would be far easier to manage my throughput. This business is very much like when I was a project manager in engineering – in that you need to know what’s coming after. What’s in the pipeline? And when you get someone sitting on a go-slow because they’re having to wait three months for a test and having lessons every 2-3 weeks, then that’s really difficult to manage.
Finally, as a user of Theory Test Pro, how do you find the system helps your students?
I don’t normally offer it straight away! Instead, I’ll let the student get on with their own training in the way they want with support from me if they need it. However, if a learner has failed their theory test and they’re not sure why, that’s when l offer Theory Test Pro. It allows me to see exactly what they’re doing and where they might be going wrong.
It means I can manage what they’re doing and see what they’ve tried and then go over it. Sometimes I do this in a Zoom call with me using the Student mode in Theory Test Pro to drill into where any knowledge gaps are. Importantly though, I never just teach my learners the answer – instead, I’ll ask them to give the answer and then ask them why it is the right answer. That way, they truly learn and will become better, safer drivers.
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