My Mod 1 experience
After four days of pretty intense training, dropping the bike a few times and a what felt like thousands of figure of eights, I was ready to take my Mod 1 test.
My test was at a North London test centre which is pretty notorious for having a pretty low pass rate and some not so friendly examiners. After doing some last minute practise on the off-road site, my instructor, one other student and I got on our bikes to travel to the test site.
As soon as I got to the test centre my nerves started to ramp up. I’m not a person who passes tests first time (it took me three goes to get my driving licence) so I didn’t have a huge amount of confidence to be honest. I knew I could do it, but it definitely wasn’t in the bag.
Sitting in the test centre, there were a mixture of instructors (relaxed, joking and pretty talkative) and the people like me…sitting there bricking it waiting for their name to be called. From where I was, you could see the off-road site. Some people decide to watch other people when they have their test but I decided not to watch as the other person I travelled up with took his test before me (not sure that was such a good decision to be honest).
Eventually my name was called and I went into a small side room. The examiner introduced himself to me and checked all my paperwork (CBT, theory and driving licence). Once he was satisfied it all checked out, he led me outside.
The examiner will ask you to get on your bike (which should be facing outwards, usually the instructors will tell you to park like this to save the faff of turning the bike around) and guide you into the test site. Once inside, he will lock the gate behind you.
This is where the nerves really start to kick in, my heart rate has actually elevated just thinking about it!!
I was told to ride to a set of cones and park my bike facing the wall. I then had to manouver my bike out of the spot backwards and finish in another set of cones facing outwards. This is a basic bike handling exercise. They key for me, is to keep the bike close to you, keep it upright and go slowly.
Once the bike is safely in between the cones, you are ready to start the slow control manuovers.
The slalom is first and generally went quite well, then the figure of eight is after that. You are supposed to go around the blue cones but if you go around the closest yellow cone, you shouldn’t be marked down for it. Don’t worry about keeping count as the examiner will tell you when to finish. I rode over to him when he called me and prepared for the slow ride.
Again, this is another way to show you are in control of the bike. You should ride at about 4/5 mph and stop when he tells you to.
Finally I had to do the u-turn. I was taught to do this from a rolling start and I completed this well.
DON’T FORGET THE LIFESAVER JUST BEFORE YOU TURN!
If you do, this is seen as a serious fault and you will fail your test.
As with everything in the off-road site, you are told to act as though you are on the road. So this means making sure you are doing shoulder checks before you move off. Also, another thing to note on both this and the mod 2 test is, the examiner will ask you to “move off when you are ready” there is no time limit for the test so take as much time as you need to compose yourself. There is no need to rush.
So, my slow control section was over and to be honest, that was the bit I felt most comfortable with. The high speed manouvers were the ones I was most worried about. My ride around the circuit was fine, I hit the 19mph needed. However both my emergency stop and my swerve manoeuvre were under speed. You get two goes at each manouver to try and get to the correct speed.
Unfortunately, while I did make the minimum at the emergency stop, I didn’t at the swerve. In theory, the smooth surface of the test centre in comparison to the area I was practising in should have made me feel confident enough to open the throttle but I still couldn’t do it.
In my opinion, I just couldn’t fully open up, knowing that I would have to swerve at the last minute. I knew, pretty much when I left the centre, that I had failed and the instructor didn’t waste any time in telling me. I think I actually found out before I had made it back into the building.
To say I was gutted would be an understatement. I nearly cried when my instructor said “Sarah…what happened!” but I managed to just about keep it together. The other guy I came with passed and while I was happy for him, I wished I was also celebrating a pass.
As the other guy had a Mod 2 test straight after his Mod 1, I waited for him to complete his test (he failed) before all three of us headed back to the bike school.
I rebooked my test for 10 days later and had to also put my Mod 2 on hold (it had been pencilled in for the following day).
So two weeks later I had my Mod 1, Round 2 and two weeks later I was in exactly the same position! I had failed again on the same thing! I obviously had an issue with getting up to speed.
Because I was pretty confident that I would be able to pass this time round, I had actually booked my Mod 2 for later in the day. I had to forfeit this and lost the £90 test fee due to this was is pretty crap but it’s a risk I was willing to take.
I later found out that although the minimum speed is 50kph, they will allow you a pass with a minor fault if you reach 48kph. On this occasion, my emergency stop was reached the 50kph minimum but my swerve only hit 47kph which was one less than I could have got away with!!!
