Digby Briggs
Words: Kim Newth
Sitting in the back-seat of a driving lesson recently brought back uncomfortable memories of my first week as a junior reporter at The Timaru Herald in the 1990s. The entire fleet of staff cars had manual gear shift and I hadn’t driven one of those since getting my licence years before. First job out and I stalled the car several times just trying to reverse it out of the car park!
So it was with 17-year-old Sophie Forsyth on her second driving lesson in Rangiora earlier this month. We were parked on High Street and instructor Digby Briggs had just told Sophie she was about to drive a test run. This is effectively a dress rehearsal for the drive she will need to pass in order to get her restricted licence.
Her first challenge was to reverse out. It wasn’t easy: Sophie was nervous and the traffic was building up behind a van waiting for her parking space. Finally, two stalls later, we were underway. All credit to Sophie, it was all onwards and upwards from that shaky start as Digby talked her through intersections, stop signs, signalling and how to search for potential dangers.
His style of delivery is deliberately calm and measured even when the driver is feeling the pressure and making poor decisions. Sophie is studying hospitality at the Christchurch Academy and has had an offer of restaurant work in town. This is what has fuelled her determination to learn to drive. She’s already had some lessons in an automatic, but also wants to master gear shifts.
Our route down Ashley Street to Kingsbury Ave, next took us to Boyd Street where Sophie tried her hand at a three-point turn. She pulled it off pretty well with Digby’s help. On average, Digby takes 22 to 23 lessons a week, mostly after school. It’s his job to try and smooth out those telltale signs of the learner driver, such as the jerky gear shifts, coming into corners too fast and nervous engine revving at intersections. Above all, it’s about staying safe on the road. Sophie is feeling pretty pleased with herself by the time we return to High Street. “It was just that reversing to start with and the clutch and accelerator when you go to take off,” she says.
Over his 19 years as an instructor, Digby has literally taught thousands of teenagers how to drive. One of the changes he’s noticed is parents now largely try to teach their kids how to drive and will only pay for a few ‘top up’ lessons prior to the licence test. “ACC spends millions of dollars on advertising – my own view is that it’d be better to pump some of that into driving lessons or going to schools,” says Digby. Perhaps it’s not so surprising, then, that some young drivers come unstuck, given their comparative lack of experience and professional instruction.
Digby works with the police in taking drivers as part of their diversion programme for defensive driving courses, as well as remedial training. The defensive driving courses are also very popular with restricted licence drivers who want to reduce their 18 month period back to 12 months before obtaining their full licence. Digby runs these courses locally two evenings a week and focuses on younger driver issues like drink driving, peer pressures, accident avoidance and other safety considerations. “Some young people have little concept of the reality of what it means to drive a car. One young guy had us on the footpath in no time. I hit the brakes and he turned to me and said ‘it’s not like PlayStation, is it’?” His key advice to parents teaching their kids to drive is to be specific with your instructions. “There’s not much point in saying ‘look out’. You need to say ‘look out for the red car coming towards you from the right’.”
As well as instructing younger drivers, Digby also does assessment drives for older drivers on behalf of both families and doctors, to confirm their driving skills are still up to standard. When not teaching driving with One Way Driving School, Digby and his wife Janine are busy running Tram Road Vineyard, a four hectare vineyard producing Riesling, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir.
