Failure - a negative, dirty and dangerous word

By JASON COLLIE

People who fail their driving test will not be told they have "failed."

Instead a kinder, gentler phrase such as, "You have not come up to the standard we are looking for," will be used.

Driving licence testers have been told to stop saying "failed" to halt the spate of attacks by flunked learners. The words "abort" and "terminate" during a test are also verbal no-nos because they are too negative, testing officers were told on a communications course held in the wake of the first attacks.

Now they should say learners "have not passed" or "come up to the standard we are looking for."

Testers claim they have suffered more abuse and bashings since the service was privatised and stopped operating out of police stations.

Two North Shore testers have been attacked in the past two months, while another was assaulted in Orewa last year.

The northern regional manager for Driver Testing NZ, Bill Steedman, said it was very difficult to tell a licence applicant he or she had failed a test and not encounter some sort of response.

"The course was to demonstrate how you can poorly choose words and the things that you say can be completely wrong.

"Words like 'terminate' sound horrendous. If they fail, you can try to tell them that they have not passed on this occasion. It tempers it. The course was something we thought might be a good idea."

All 48 testers in the northern half of the North Island attended the course, conducted by communications adviser Mary Hunt last month. She said last night that she was trying to improve the consistency towards customer service.

"We want them to brief the people carefully so they know what is going to happen and what they will be judged on.

"We also want them to say at the end that the next step is, 'You need to do this and learn these things,' so instead of saying they have failed, we are getting the customer service language in there."

A North Shore mother, Anne Wakelin, said she felt that some testers' attitudes caused the abuse they received. Her son Daniel had not wanted to resit his test because of the way he was dealt with.

"The tester obviously had his reasons for failing him, but it was his attitude. You can't excuse [the assaults] but you can see why somebody loses it."