Learning to drive (by )

It's been many months since I passed my driving test now, but as my instructors had warned me, you never stop learning to drive.

You see, in order to pass the test you have to be a super-perfect driver; you need to think carefully about everything, and follow precise procedures, because that's what the examiners want to see.

Then you start driving around "for real", with passengers talking to you, having to think about your route rather than being told to take the next left. Driving starts to happen automatically, without thought.

This is why new drivers are prone to crashing, and have to pay more for their car insurance... I've noticed this happening, myself. Since I'm not thinking, I start to develop bad habits. Then I start to notice them, and correct them by remembering to stop and think about the situation when it arises in future. Recently I noticed that I kept taking corners too quickly; I didn't notice this myself since I instinctively leant into the corners as I steered around them, but I noticed that my passengers kept grabbing onto things when I went around corners. So I went through a period of anticipating this when a corner approached, slowing down more than usual, and thinking about how far the vehicle tilts as it goes round the corner and the magnitude of experience transverse acceleration forces. After a while this became second nature, and so I now no longer explicitly think about corners any more; I just end up taking them at the correct speed.

With any luck, I will continue to notice bad habits as they develop, and train myself out of them before they become a problem!

I'm not sure if I'll ever be very good at parking, however. Perhaps due to my bad depth perception, I find it very hard to judge how far the vehicle is from nearby obstacles, so I have to be over-cautious with manoeuvring, which means it takes me an age to get properly parked in tight gaps!

Oddly, I find parking much easier in the van, because there's hardly any bonnet protruding in front to worry about, and the mirrors actually show the entire rear of the van, from the tyres up, meaning I can easily use depth cues other than binocular vision to judge the distances between the rear corners of the van and nearby objects. The power steering and tight turning circle (it's clearly designed for inner-city delivery work) help, too!

1 Comment

  • By Daynal, Wed 2nd Aug 2006 @ 7:19 pm

    My friend Thomas would take corners too quickly. I got him a nice glass pendulum on a long chain and hung it from his mirror. If, while taking a corner or something, it bumps into either him or the windscreen, he knows his driving is crap.

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