Newslink March

Area News
What’s that lurking in the ‘doolie dark?’
Brian Thomson
MSA GB Scotland
As the saying goes, “every silver lining
has a cloud”, and as we venture into the
lighter nights it allows us to perhaps fit in
that extra lesson to help catch up with
the backlog, or lets us get home at a
normal time and still have enough light
to clean the car ready for the next day.
My cloud is that, within reason, there’s
not the same opportunity to get the
students out for a ‘doolie drive’. For those
of you reading this who hail from south
of Reykjavik, that’s getting the students
out when it’s ‘really’ dark on country
roads for a night time driving experience.
Now, I realise we are luckier than
others in the country as we can get from
roads with street lighting to rural driving
in under five minutes. My most popular
‘Doolie route’ starts with a town pick up,
usually around 8pm, and driving out of
the town in the street lights, as we’ll
have done lots of times. Then it’s a
stretch of main road where there are
plenty of learning opportunities: a good
chance of meeting oncoming motorists
and showing the student where they can
look to see the left verge using the other
car’s lights (while warning them not to
look at the oncoming lights). There’s also
this thing they have to do with the dip
switch, as most students using lights in
the town never really have to use that
function, and it’s something that takes a
bit of concentration to remember. There
have been numerous doolie drives which
start with the prompt, “dip your lights,
full beam” and this will continue until the
student grasps the task in hand and
becomes independent. However, there
have been others I’ve been on during
which that ‘task’ just does not compute,
no matter how many times I say “if a car
come towards you, remember to dip your
lights...’ done, but then we drive on
showing dipped lights only until the
instruction of ‘full beam please’ comes
from the left. (Interestingly, the car does
have auto dip lights but that’s a function
they are not being shown).
So we drive about ten or so miles on
the main A road but it’s usually not
completely dark because of the light
provided by other motorists coming
towards us or overtaking (another chance
to issue a ‘dip your lights’ warning).
We’re now following the cat’s eyes way
ahead, assessing the pitch of the corners
and the gears they think they may have
to use, until we’re reach another town
where we turn off into the ‘doolie dark’
countryside.
Now we are just driving with what we
can see with our own car lights, but at
this time in the evening and in the
country roads with no footpath, the
chance of dog walkers on the road is
fairly high and not all are clad in
fluorescent clothing or carrying a torch.
It’s a good lesson about our approach
position to a corner, explaining how it is
slightly different from the daylight
position when you don’t see the beams
of light coming towards you.
Once the students see that there is
that pre-warning of someone coming in
the other direction, it does calm some of
them down and takes the scary thoughts
of driving in the dark away.
We drive past a very well lit dairy farm,
at which point the student is informed
that the farmer plays soothing music to
the cattle to enhance their milk
production, (nothing to do with driving
but a life lesson not to be missed).
So we are now into the heart of the
country where light pollution is minimal.
By this time the students has covered a
few miles and I can feel most of them
42 NEWSLINK n MARCH 2023