Double Decker Driving School

Episode 4 (1x4)

Air date: Apr 16, 2015

This time, newly-married Rodney Willis is preparing for his test. Despite having driven hundreds of cars in his previous job as a car salesman, nothing can prepare Rodney for taking control of a ten-tonne double decker - particularly when he finds himself surrounded with hundreds of marching protesters in the middle of Trafalgar Square. Now he’s ready for his test, but forgetting to indicate at a roundabout sees Rodney lose his cool. A face to face meeting with training manager Geoff White results in Rodney being told to buck up his ideas, or face being thrown off the course. Geoff says: “Anytime you forget when you’re driving in service, you’re probably talking about killing somebody, you can’t afford to forget can you? No. You need to get over it, grow a pair, move on.” Former traffic warden Alvin de Guzman is a father of three who faces a battle to get to grips with the English language as well as the double-decker buses he is learning to drive. After several near misses with cars and lorries on London’s roads, Alvin needs to dramatically improve and show his instructors on his regular progress checks that he has the ability to understand what’s needed of him. He says: “Of course I am worried about it because they will check the way I drive now again, I hope I will make progress. I have a 15-year-old daughter, I have a 13-year-old son, and I have a one-year-old daughter. I don’t want to let them down.” Meanwhile, Courtney de Santos is brimming with confidence having turned to bus driving after helming a white van. He says: “I’d say I mastered driving one of them [a van], it was a piece of cake, so I was like, ‘Let me try something bigger.’ When I try and do things, I do things to the best of my ability, when you go into something you might as well be the best.” But his new instructor Shabaz Alam believes the young trainee is too cocky and isn’t learning from his mistakes, so sets out to put Cou