President Des Moore greets Victor Falls, with club members Derick Woods (L) and Robin Blackford (R)

Coleraine Probus gets behind the steering wheel

The guest speaker at a recent Probus meeting certainly got the motoring members of the club thinking. Victor Falls is the Secretary of the North Coast branch of the 'Institute of Advanced Motorists' (IAM). Based in Limavady, the group covers an area stretching from the City of Derry over to Ballycastle, and is responsible for advanced driving tuition (and riding, as motorcyclists are included).

Victor's talk and presentation gave a lot of tips for different driving aspects and weather conditions while on the road. For normal driving, there should be a two second gap between you and the vehicle in front. The little rhyme 'Only a fool breaks the 2 second rule' is a handy verbal measure of the distance. In the wet or snow, then it is a four second rule - say the rhyme twice! Then there is 'Puddles hide Potholes', and with the bad winter we have had, there are plenty of potholes about, and some are really quite deep - and that means dangerous too!

The second part of Victor's talk took the form of a picture quiz, showing various everyday driving seat views and asking what the members can see, and what they can't see, but need to think about as well. For instance, a busy roundabout (and we've no shortage of them! - WebEd), what can we expect from the cars on the road! is the pedestrian about to cross the road! could there be something behind the big van blocking the view to the right! and so on. Another picture looked like a long section of open road, nothing to see? - a second look showed that there was a dip in the road, which could 'hide' an oncoming vehicle.

Victor then went on the talk about the types of courses the Institute provided. The main one being the prestigious and comprehensive 'IAM' certificate and badge. Many car insurance providers view this as an award for driving excellence, and thereby give a discount on their premiums. A course with caught the attention of many of the club members was the 'Mature Driver Review'. Now that sounded about right. The days of being 'boy racers' had (hopefully) passed, but 'Mature', that sounded more like it!

For more information about the 'Institute of Advanced Motorists' and some very useful 'Tips' on safer driving, just 'Click' on one of the Badge links below (these will open in new windows):

1. The IAM's driving tips can be found at:


2. The 'Mature Driver Review' details are at:


3. …and there are a wide variety of other modules, assessments (as well as the tests) under the general heading at:


4. Probus Club members may contact the group our local group website which is:


5. Please feel free to contact us if you need any further information about the IAM or the Group and its next course starting on 7 April:

(With much thanks to Victor Fails, IAM Group Secretary, for providing all these links - WebEd)