So this Saturday, me and a Mate went to take our CBT1 (learner to Restricted) with Rider Training.
Initially I was skepticle as to whether the extra cost of doing the CBT would be worth it...
Let me now assure you that it is worth every cent. And let me elaborate why:
You can do the test on a Saturday - the NZTA only offer tests from 7-3 monday to friday, no weekends
You are taking the test with an actual Motorcyclist who has ridden a bike for many year, as opposed to some Cager knob with a clip board who has never ridden in their life. I will elaborate more on this down below
It is an awesome ride, Dawn took us around Ridge rd in Albany, and even though we were on our 250s and she was on her 1300 B King, it was still a good blast (at 80 kph) round some of those bends.
You get to pick Dawn's Brains - it wasn't a ride with a robot/GPS system 'in 200 meters, turn right..... Do a U turn... Turn Left', we were talking about various things bike before, during and after the ride, even a few snide comments about Cagers doing typically cager things requiring us to take positive action
Finally - You get tips on what you need to improve on, This IMO is really what makes the CBT the superior option for going from L-R and from R-F. Needless to say Me and my Mate have a few bad habits that we have picked up and Dawn talked to us about these, why they are bad habits, what we need to be practicing and how to avoid ending up as a statistic.
Before the test as well we had a few questions - and as opposed to the typical Tester approach of 'I can't tell you, you need to drive legally and as you would normally' - Dawn was happy to clarify a few things as to what to expect:
During the test - We hit some heavy traffic, now we had asked Dawn before the test about filtering - as the criteria in the CBT is a little vague as to whether you can filter during the test, She confirmed if the traffic was heavy, she would ask as to whether or not we were happy to filter (and of course if we were going to go filtering, we had to do it safely) needless to say, we went up the traffic and continued on with the test.
We also got Dawn's expect judgement - I made a couple of really minor (but silly) errors mainly having a bit of fun round the last roundabout and after the test Dawn talked to me about it - she said that I can ride well and safely, my head checks were good, my control was good - she gave us a good telling off about the errors...
So TL-DR - Taking your CBT with Dawn from Rider Training is worth every cent - good ride, good test, good company - and we both passed
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Originally Posted by rapid van cleef
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