The life of a Learner

A pupil of mine told me today that her Father was criticising her the other day on one of their private lessons, for trying to drive in the style of all the other drivers around her.  His attention was in particular on her approaching speed for turns, which he considered to be too fast resulting in last minute braking.  Whilst she doesn’t necessarily dispute what he says about her speed, her over-riding concern is that she doesn’t want to hold other drivers up behind her, which is why she does what she does.

Doing more than one driving action at a time is termed as ‘overlapping’ and in some instances it is not only unavoidable, but positively desirable.  However, in the vast majority of driving, it is to be avoided.  

Most drivers these days, are driving with very little margin for error.  So typically, they will do 30 in a 30 regardless of the weather conditions or sometimes with little adapting to a change of road conditions either.  In other words, people are often driving at the maximum legal speed they can – the emphasis is on speed rather than a ‘system’ of driving. 

A consequence of this attitude to driving is that drivers typically bowl up to a junction at too fast a speed, with the intent to put on some last second braking (just enough to turn as fast as is reasonably possible) and the last thing that is thought of is the relevant gear for that speed.  So symptoms of this driving are:

Changing gear on bends/turns

Heavy braking on bends/turns

Clutch down on the bend/turn

Taking the bend/turn too fast – the passengers all lean excessively in their seats

Inaccurate position on the bend/turn due to the left hand being busy trying to change gear

Reduced observations due to the speed making all other actions frantic – some people’s ability to multi-task in fractions of a second are better than others

And this attitude is contagious.  Because many people are driving ‘to the max’ they tend to go into a mode of ‘hyper sensitivity’ about everyone else around them.  So their tolerance of others is that much more reduced, because they take the attitude that ‘If I’m making all this effort to keep up, then everyone else should too’ – and a symptom of this is the common driving fault of tailgating, where drivers drive too close to the rear of the vehicle in front in their quest to ‘pressure others’ to go faster, faster, faster.  It’s a vicious downward spiral, and this is a mindset problem.  In just the same way that I was describing in this video about drivers attitudes to pedestrians crossing zebra crossings http://youtu.be/4hewRCcIq2o

As independent drivers, there needs to be a willingness to break this chain of events and drive with confidence to a system that means that rather than driving to match other drivers around you, you drive literally to the conditions. 

So when turning left, the vital skill that is being completely ignored by drivers who regularly overlap, is the skill of assessment.  Assessing how tight a turn is, how busy it is, how much steering is required, what the vision is like on the approach – these vital assessments ultimately decide what we consider to be the appropriate speed for that given left turn.  This can also be directly transferred to what is needed at other junctions too inc roundabouts.  The beauty with this approach is that it gets you used to considering how driving conditions change, and this is absolutely vital when you want to be a competent driver in unfamiliar journeys.    So typically, you identify the junction well in advance, you make assessments based on the above criteria of what is the correct speed on approach, you then use the foot brake to get to that speed about 8 car lengths BEFORE the junction.  Yep, 8 car lengths.  The reason why you need to get to that speed by that distance is that you then need to come off brakes and dip clutch to change gear for that relevant speed.  So that the gear change is not rushed, you need time – time is a golden commodity to us when driving.  That 8 car lengths will give you time to do an unhurried gear change.  You will then find yourself getting to the ‘point of turn’ (where the hands are needed for steering purposes), and you will be at the right speed to do the necessary observations before the steering occurs.

Drivers who overlap, do not do any of that ‘thinking’ activity.  They tend to bowl up to junctions in a robotic manner, and basically.... what happens, happens – it tends to be all reactive.  There is no scope for any margin of errors.

This ‘assessment’ phase is a skill in itself, and needs practising, but once you develop it, it tends to stick with you, it simply becomes the way you drive.

Another thing that family members will often question with Learners is what is this ‘setting the feet’ all about?      As they don’t do it, they can’t think why on earth it is necessary.  And when a driver becomes properly accustomed to how their car ‘ticks’ eg biting point, gears at what speeds, handling, then yes this concept of setting feet will appear odd.  But consider how it is for a Learner – they don’t have that experience to pull on.  So when a Learner has to deal with moving off on a hill on a red traffic light, or emerging on to a busy major road, or dealing with a camber on a ‘turn in the road’, or getting on to a busy roundabout from stationary – then it really is handy to break the driving actions down into sections.  And ‘setting the feet’ is one such action.  It really does spur confidence when a Learner realises they are not stalling, or rolling uncontrollably back on a hill – and if ‘setting the feet’ goes some way in the early days to obtaining that confidence, it is well worth the effort.