The 'N' reg Peugeot

One of the biggest problems for a 17 yr old when they want to learn to drive is that they have very little to compare it to.  Inevitably it tends to be compared to passing an exam.  Passing a car test and passing a school exam both involve learning, so that very often is the term of reference used.

Following this line of thought through, very often students will leave cramming for an exam to the last minute, sometimes quite literally.  You will hear students advising each other to leave it to the night before, that way, when you take the exam in the morning, it’s just been ‘learnt’ and will come to you straight away therefore making it easier.  Well I’m not in any position to question the rights and wrong of that strategy but I can draw some direct links with learning to drive. 

A written exam is measuring your ability to perform certain tasks in your brain on a given day.  Some of those tasks will require a routine/process/method to perform it comprehensively, efficiently and accurately.  If you can’t recall how that process is carried out, then it is a very uncomfortable feeling to realise that you have not prepared well enough.  Occasionally you may actually remember the process but you have not practised APPLYING that process enough, to cover all the possible variations.   If you miss out one vital step in the process, the answer is wrong and you are doomed.  On some questions you are actually drawing on learning that occurred throughout the academic year, facts, figures, processes, opinions; there is no better feeling than instantly being able to recall learning – it is a good demonstration of depth of learning from earlier in the year.

I remember doing an ‘HNC’ many moons ago, and speaking to a girlfriend on the phone I was relaying how frustrated I was at not being able to solve a maths equation.  To my astonishment she was able to answer it instantly, while on the phone.  Some people can visualise things better than others, they can identify patterns far quicker than others and they can run through a structure/process far easier than others. 

Learning to drive has similarities with the above, in terms of the necessity to recall and apply key principles from the brain.  However with driving there is the added factor of the physical element.  There is a need to be able to co-ordinate your hand and feet movements accurately, there is a need to be able to assess through your eyes certain aspects that are important such as spatial awareness of your position in the road, or how a junction needs to be driven due to the width of road or road users already on it.  The driving test is measuring your physical and mental ability and in that regard it has little resemblance to an academic exam. 

But one of the absolute key differences that can be very easily overlooked is the consequences of getting something wrong when driving.  If you find yourself struggling with a written exam, then you know that the consequence will very likely be a lower grade, perhaps feelings of frustration, anger, disappointment.  If you struggle on the driving test you could damage a vehicle, injure a person, fail the test, frighten a pedestrian, confuse a cyclist, and you might feel embarrassed, apologetic, resentful, angry, disappointed.  When you, me, anyone learns to drive, they are in effect putting up a clear sign of intention to take the responsibility of being safe, for the good of everyone, on the public roads.  You don’t automatically have a right to drive on public roads, you have to demonstrate a willingness to take responsibility for what that entails.

 Now we are talking.  Now we can begin to see how our attitudes to driving actually play a part in this process.  We can also see how our attitudes to LEARNING to drive will speak volumes about us as individual people.  If you hold little regard for how your learning to drive might impact other road users, then what does that say about you?  The mental skills required to pass an academic qualification will not be used every day for the rest of your life, but the mental and physical skills required to drive a car safely and efficiently certainly will need to be used constantly. 

Yesterday, the weather that we had was pretty extreme.  I don’t remember taking driving lessons in such extreme weather for a long time.  It was extremely windy, powerfully gusty wind, the kind that can easily catch you out.  It was raining very hard, the spray from the rain on the surface of the road was significantly affecting visibility.  My learner and I were doing a ‘rural run’, we were practising driving on country roads; reading the severity of bends, anticipating hazards that are specific to rural areas, discovering how the style of driving on rural roads differs to urban roads.  At one point, my learner was doing 50 on a country road with a 60 limit, a sensible speed I thought due to the conditions.  It was a thin 2 way road, 1 lane in each direction, verges and hedges both sides, no kerbs, no white paint.  Behind us we had a dark coloured N reg Peugeot, who overtook us at the very time when a black car could be seen to be approaching a T junction to our left up ahead.  The black car pulls out from the junction, a poor decision, and the Peugeot finds itself having to brake very very hard from 60+ mph on the wrong side of the road.  It’s not lost on me, that that particular situation could so easily have resulted in fatalities..... very easily indeed.  The Peugeot then continued on its way, very close to the rear of the black car for a few miles.  Not appreciating how his poor driving on the overtake nearly cost him or others lives, the driver then continues to drive staggeringly close to the other vehicle, I imagine as his emotions of anger are now kicking in, the adrenalin is overflowing, and the ‘red mist’ of emotion is further clouding that persons ability to drive safely.  Neither driver was a learner, they were both full licence holders, and neither of them were driving to the conditions.  You have to question whether they covered driving on rural roads on their driving lessons, you have to question if they did any driving lessons in extreme weather conditions or even spoke of the affects, you have to wonder if they did learn about it but simply disregarded this once they passed their test.  It makes you wonder if they had actually passed a driving test, were they foreign, did they have eyesight problems, were they rushing for any particular reason, did they want to simply overtake a learner car for the sake of it. 

So the attitude to learning, and the responsibility of the driver once the test is passed, makes the strategy of learning to drive a much different prospect to studying for an academic qualification. 

My advice for any learners is to first of all find yourself a trainer that is going to give comprehensive training, in terms of the subjects covered and the attitudes/responsibilities that drivers require to be a safe driver for life.  Forget about drawing any comparisons between learning to drive and academic qualifications; learning to drive requires a different mindset.  The sooner you realise that the onus is on you to learn and apply key driving skills for the rest of your life the better.  If you are going to rely on your driving instructor to keep on reminding you of the need for mirror checks so that you just manage to pass the test, and then you can forget about them, then welcome to the world of the N reg Peugeot – and I wish you the best of luck, as that is exactly what you will be needing for the rest of your driving life.