One Tell Me, one Show Me, plus FLOWDERY for every day after
Today’s test asks exactly two vehicle safety questions, a Tell Me before you set off, and a Show Me while you’re already driving. Getting one, or both, wrong costs a single driving fault, nothing more. It only becomes a fail if answering the Show Me question means driving dangerously, or potentially dangerously, while you do it.
Only two questions are asked, but the examiner is drawing from a much larger bank of both, so a pupil who’s only prepared for a handful of favourites is gambling. Worth knowing the whole set.
Tell Me
Asked before you drive, from the driver’s seat. The current bank covers: checking the brakes before a journey, finding and checking recommended tyre pressures, adjusting the head restraint correctly, checking tyre tread depth and condition, checking headlights and tail lights are working, recognising a fault with the anti-lock braking system, checking the direction indicators, checking the brake lights, checking power-assisted steering before a journey, switching on the rear fog light and knowing when to use it, switching from dipped to main beam and confirming it’s on, and three questions that start with opening the bonnet, checking engine oil, coolant, and brake fluid. For those last three, you open the bonnet and explain the check, you’re not required to top anything up or physically demonstrate it.
Show Me
Asked while you’re driving, whenever it’s actually safe to answer. The current bank covers: washing and cleaning the rear windscreen, washing and cleaning the front windscreen, switching on the dipped headlights, setting the rear demister, operating the horn, demisting the front windscreen, and opening and closing a side window. Notice the shift from Tell Me, every one of these is something you do at the wheel, not a walk-round inspection or a standstill demonstration.
FLOWDERY
Show Me, Tell Me only comes up once, on test day, and only two questions out of the whole bank at that. Worth teaching alongside it is FLOWDERY, a habit for every day a pupil drives, long after the test is behind them: Fuel, enough to get where you’re going and back. Lights, all of them working, checked from outside the car occasionally rather than assumed. Oil, level checked periodically, not only once a warning light appears. Water, coolant and washer fluid both. Damage, a quick look round for anything new, a scrape, a crack, a tyre that’s picked something up. Electrics, everything that needs power actually has it. Rubber, tyre tread and pressure, the only part of the car actually touching the road, and the wiper blades too, since a smeared or splitting blade in heavy rain is its own visibility hazard. And Y, You, the same question introduced back in the cockpit drill article, are you actually fit to drive today.
FLOWDERY covers much of the same ground as Show Me, Tell Me, but it’s meant for every drive, not just the one where an examiner happens to be asking.
Where to Practise These Checks
A garage, or at home on the drive, is the right place to actually practise most of this, somewhere with easy access to air for the tyres, water, screen wash, and oil, rather than attempting it at the roadside where none of that is close to hand. If a roadside check is ever genuinely necessary, both instructor and pupil should be wearing high-visibility clothing, for the same reason as any other roadside stop, you’re standing next to moving traffic, not just parked beside it.
Why This Matters for Teaching
The temptation, understandably, is to teach these as a script to memorise, a handful of stock answers rehearsed until they come out smoothly under pressure. That gets a pass, but it misses the actual point of the exercise, checking your own car’s oil, tyres, and lights is something every driver should be doing anyway, long after the test is behind them. A pupil who’s been shown where the dipstick actually is, and why 1.6mm matters in the wet, will still be checking their tyres years later. A pupil who’s only memorised the answer won’t remember it past the following Tuesday. FLOWDERY is worth teaching precisely because it survives the test, it’s a habit rather than an answer.
Next in the series: Eco-Safe Driving, covering the environmental case for smoother driving and what it actually saves.
Leave a Reply