New road BEFORE steering

There are certain key ‘habits’ that it is extremely good to get in to as soon as possible when learning to drive.  One of these is to make sure you check out your intended ‘new road’ before you turn in to it.  So this means that immediately before you turn the steering wheel towards your intended path, your eyes do a final look to make sure it is safe to proceed.  This comes down to realising that to have a structure to where your eyes look, in terms of timing, is important.

I went out with a young chap the other night, who was on his 3^rd hour of being with me.  So initially he directed me to a village he wanted to start off at.  We swapped over and he had I would estimate 6 laps of a circuit to firm up on turning/emerging left (we had done right on his very first lesson).

After that we went for a drive and passed through some spectacularly beautiful villages which were breathtakingly tranquil.  He was literally driving where he wanted to go.  What cropped up not once but twice was extremely fortunate to experience so early on, and something I’d like to share.

The first case was when he came to a left emerge.  He bowled up to the giveways, followed the verge round to the left, (it was a closed junction – vision was pants), put it in first and gently braked to the give way reference point (he had told me earlier in the briefing he had been watching the left emerge video on my driving Facebook page).  Then he started his ‘minimum obs’ = right, centre, left, centre, right.  Not a sausage, nothing even moving.  Now this is the crucial bit.  He then looked in the direction of the ‘new road’, that he intended to drive in to BEFORE he began moving.  And at that precise time, literally 10 racing cyclists whizz round a bend to our left en-mass.  My chap stayed where he was, still at the give ways, until they all passed, then did those minimum obs, and 'new road' check again.  It sounds like a non-event perhaps, but it was absolutely huge in my book.  The temptation would have been to start emerging once it was seen to be clear to the right, and it would have been very messy.  That ‘new road’ check was essential, absolutely essential in checking it was safe to proceed.  It’s rare for such a wonderful real life demonstration to crop up so early on, I could not have wished for a better incident.  What is even more unusual is that within 15-20 mins the following cropped up.

My chap had just come off a roundabout and entered 30’s as he came in to a small town.  I’d asked him to turn left, and whilst he had spotted the left, the vision in to the new road was not great.  What we had been focussing on just prior to this was the importance to assess what is the necessary speed/gear for the given turning.  As such, he was working hard using the foot brake to slow the car down well in advance of the turning, so that it gave him time to pop it in 2^nd still well in advance.  The beauty about doing these things in advance is that it then gives TIME to do the necessary obs before turning left.  As he got to the ‘point of turn’ to turn left, he had checked his left wing mirror for cyclists coming along his nearside, and crucially he looked into the ‘new road’ – his intended path BEFORE he started steering into it.  Only when he was at that point, was he then able to see in the new road, 2 strapping big horses with young lasses on them, in the new road, approaching the give ways, riding side by side; so effectively taking up the entire lane.  My chap dipped the clutch, and paused before entering this new road, which gave himself time to work out what was the correct action.    So the car was not even in the new road at this point.  He put it in first, and very gently entered the new road, positioning more to the left to get well away from the horses.  The riders thanked him and it was once again, seemingly a non-event.  But of course, whilst that is true from a ‘results’ point of view, it was only because my chap had given himself the opportunity to check out that new road before entering it.

My only regret was that I was not filming that driving session; it’s one thing me attempting to describe what happened here for my other Learners to get something from it, but if you could have seen those 2 examples on my YouTube channel (‘2010BIGTOM’) it would have been far more beneficial to all.