Driving round with Mum and Dad

You’ve finished your exams, the holiday period is just round the corner.  Thousands of people will be taking their tests over the holiday period, and there will be loads of driving round with friends/family to help prepare for the test. 

Rather than just picking a destination and seeing what crops up, it’s a really good idea to develop the link between working on the information your eyes see and how that affects your driving actions.

An example of something you could try together would be to say out loud every time you see something up ahead that’s going to cause you to slow down or change direction, and what you literally have to do.  A bend up ahead, a roundabout, a parked car, a cyclist, traffic lights – these are all examples of things that are going to make you change your speed to deal with them, and some of them will ALSO need a directional change to.  So if you have a parked car on the left for example, as the driver you would need to say something along the lines of “parked car, central mirror, right mirror, off gas, steer to the right”.   The idea is to say all of that BEFORE you do it, your parent should then be able to watch you do exactly what you have said.  The central mirror check was to check what is directly behind you and how close to you before you slow, and the right mirror check is checking for motor bikes or anything that may be overtaking before you steer over to the right.  Gently drive around the residential areas in Stanground or Dogsthorpe for this one.

The beauty with this drill is that it is developing the skill of forward planning, which is an incredibly important driving skill.  Not only that, but your parent rather than trying to spot a fault, is listening and seeing you drive to a system – they will like that, you will feel good and the experience is generally so much more positive. 

One more example I’ll give is approaching a left hand bend, you should be saying something like “bend, central mirror, off gas, set speed, back on gas to maintain speed”.   The central mirror check is to check how close the vehicle behind is as you are about to slow.

Another drill is to simply spot speed signs.  If you travel from Werrington into Town on the dual carriageway, there will be tons of them – see who spots the speed signs first.

Another drill is identify what sort of pedestrian crossings are coming up eg zebra, pelican, toucan, puffin.  Go from Ferry Meadows along Oundle Road, into town and up to Queensgate Roundabout and there will be loads for you to spot on the way. Just tell your parent what sort it is.  Once you've done it, pull over, have a breather and tell your parent how you knew, what the differences are, and how that information helps you to anticipate events when you are driving - they'll like to hear that. Then go and do the whole stretch of Lincoln Road - doing exactly the same thing.  This is good quality practice.

A little tip for you.  Ask your parent to use a stopwatch and when you say something from any of the drills above, get them to start the time (or just count out loud) you should be looking at around 10 secs before you come to what you’ve mentioned.  So for example, if you said ‘zebra crossing’ in the last example, then there should be about 10 secs before you get to it.  The reason why is that at 30mph we are travelling at 45’ a sec roughly, so 10 secs will give us 450’ to think, plan, say and do our actions needed for that hazard.  In driving, you need time, time is the most important thing that allows us to plan a smooth journey.  The sooner you can spot these things up ahead, the more time you have to act on them. 

The other thing you may notice with the above, is that you can do them while you are a passenger too - so you can be working away in your head, spotting these things and saying in your head what you would do next - so there's loads of opportunity to practice.

Good luck with that – and happy driving with your family.  Don’t forget to give them a special treat for taking you out..... they are being very brave and incredibly helpful to your learning experience.