Being '30 something' and unable to drive....

Our circumstances change, perceptions and outlooks in general are forever evolving, and unless we take the trouble to specifically review something, the danger is it gets filed deep in the mind, under the heading ‘for another day’ – a day that never arrives.  Consider where you live.  You may have selected 10 years ago where you are living now for very good reasons that were appropriate to you and your life... 10 years ago.  

Things move on, and bringing little ones into the world means options of schooling in your area becomes an issue.  Consider your work.  Occupations change or develop and you may find that not being near a mainline train station is quite inconvenient.  It may be as simple as things that you considered to be tolerable 10 years ago, have just become quite intolerable as the years have marched on for example, noisy neighbours, or having a very small back garden, or not having broadband covered in your area.  My point is that things evolve, and unless we consciously pause, and review where we are and check that is where we want to be, then the danger is we just trundle along not reaching the levels of satisfaction that are very much achievable.                                        

And perhaps that is worth acknowledging from the start, change in our lifestyle is very often good, very often positive and to be encouraged.  Long gone are the days when we start a job at 17 and retire doing the same work 50 years later.  We are in an age where diversity rules, and having the courage to break free from ‘routine’ is very uplifting.  A good case in point is Zappo's the shoe people, no. 2 of their 10 core values is ‘embrace and drive change’ – their employees are positively encouraged to do things differently, break free from rigid processes and the benefits to their customers are plain to see.                             

We are all able to search in the Driving Standards Agency website for statistics on tests in the UK.  Randomly looking at the year Apr 2010 – Mar 2011 for example, shows that nationally 513,178 passed the practical test between the ages of 17 – 24, and yet a staggering 230,704 passed between the ages of 25 – 91 (yes, a chap of 91 passed his test that year – 3 cheers for him!  Spare a thought though for the poor chap of 95 who took the test and failed).  So if you are 25 or over, whilst you possibly may FEEL that you should have been driving many years ago, the statistics tend to indicate that you are by no means alone, over 30% of all test passes in that year were from 25 year olds and over. 

There are a whole variety of reasons why people don’t pass their test until later on in life.  At 17, 18 and 19 we are young adults and are busy ‘finding our feet’ in the world.  Some of us get engrossed in academic study which often entails moving to another part of the UK near to your College/University.  Being able to drive simply does not have the priority in your life.  Others are busy trying to find work, or taking further training for their work and that is the centre of their life for that period of time.  

For others it can be a problem of finance – not just affording to train with a Driving Instructor, but even if you were to pass, finding the money to buy a car and insure it can be just too difficult to achieve.  For example, as an absolute beginner, you can pay in the region of £650 - £1500 to train, you will pay about £1000 for a second hand small car, and a 17 year old can reasonably expect to pay 2-3 times that price to then insure the car for 1 year.  When you also consider fuel costs whereby a small car will cost about £50 to fill it up with fuel, then if you needed to do that once per week, that itself would cost £2600.  And then there are the maintenance costs for consumables like tyres and exhausts and then servicing and MOT costs.  All in all, for a 17 year old in year 1 of their driving life, they can reasonably expect to spend about £7000 to train, pass the test and then drive around.  Now that is a large expense and may go some way to explaining why people choose to leave learning to drive until later in their life. 

Other reasons can be to do with personal circumstances, such as living in an area where it is hard to find a Driving Instructor or Test Centre.  Conversely, some people live in areas where the public transport is actually extremely reliable, very frequent and reasonably cost efficient, which means that there is simply little need to drive.  Our upbringing can also have an effect on our desire to learn to drive; some have bad experiences of being a passenger involved in a nasty accident, some are subjected to poor driving standards by key people in their lives like parents or friends and those experiences literally put them off being in a car.  For some it comes down to their attitude to learning, maybe they had a bad experience of learning at school where they had issues with a Teacher or the teaching style, or maybe struggled with tests and as a consequence hate to take any kind of tests.  People can be frightened of failure, I’m not talking just about tests here, for some it troubles them that they may not be able to achieve, they may not be able to perform the necessary mental and physical skills required to drive.  There can be a whole raft of reasons for this, and all of them perfectly natural and valid.  The mind affects nerves, motivation, and let’s not forget your attitude to driving.  

There is no stigma attached to being 20 or 30 ‘something’ and not being able to drive, it is actually very common.  It is one thing considering how not being able to drive affects your pride but quite another to consider how it now affects your lifestyle.  Although it is very easy to immediately consider how it can improve your career prospects, and opens up opportunities for choosing where you live, sometimes the benefits are far more practical.  A Parent being able to CHOOSE to take the car on a school run when it is very cold or wet is no small ‘life changer’.

Having the ability to drive a sick child to an out of hours Doctor Surgery and pick up medicine out of hours is huge for a family with young ones.  Being able to fit so many more jobs in to your 24hr day will be fantastically liberating – they don’t always need to be routine tasks, some of these new options affect mood, health, relationships .... if you just ponder for a second how being able to drive will benefit a sport or hobby or interest you have, or how it will benefit you visiting and supporting an elderly Parent.

The fact that you have taken the trouble to read this blog is a sign that you are willing to consider ‘change’ – do not under estimate the power of your mind and how it makes you do the things you do.  Learning how to drive or fly or play an instrument or write creatively or sing or dance or play a sport involve learning new skills.  That is the kind of ‘change’ that you wont necessarily know you are missing; you often hear elderly people resenting the fact that they never fulfilled a lifelong desire for a certain activity.  They realise in their heart of hearts that they actually would have got so much success, reward and satisfaction if they had learnt this skill they have longed for all their life – which makes me think of our 95 yr old friend on the DVSA stats who clearly was trying to right this wrong in his life.

What you do have though that is worth celebrating is experience.  This is a key fact that differentiates you from a 17 year old who is wanting to learn to drive.   You will have a very good idea of learning styles that you like, in other words HOW you like to learn.  You will undoubtedly have experienced passing and failing in different walks of your life.  You will appreciate the importance of being ‘allowed’ to make mistakes in a safe environment, discover techniques for yourself that work for you personally.  You will very likely have had to identify a strategy to achieve a certain goal, and you appreciate that an open mind to learning can often be the difference between success and failure.   Consider the benefits of building relationships, and how open communication between important people around you is so incredibly important.   Think how your actions can affect others around you, and how important it is to be considerate to others.  

These are all very important lifeskills that will benefit you greatly when you learn to drive.  Attitudes, motivation, relationships, communication, learning styles – these are significant factors on the journey to becoming an independent driver.  Being able to see the connections and differences between driving lessons, the driving test, and how you then want to drive for the rest of your life is something that is aided with experience..... and experience you have!  

Another practical advantage of learning to drive later on in life is that the car insurance companies acknowledge that this experience you have will dramatically alter the chances of you being involved in an accident as compared to a 17 year old for example.  In general terms, the insurance premiums for a 26-35 year old newly qualified driver will be about a third of that for a 17 year old male for example – another cause for celebration.

To give balance to my point here I should point out that sometimes these experiences are perceived by some to hinder learning a new skill.  Self doubt can be quite corrosive in a learning environment.  Sometimes I’ve noticed that more experienced Learners can be too thoughtful for other road users around them, they are so conscious of not wanting to upset others that they are actually being too thoughtful and do not show enough assertiveness.  Likewise, some people have experienced poor driving over the years that really sticks in the mind – maybe speed related on a motorway, or an accident involving a vulnerable road user.  These experiences should not be considered as negative at all – being wise to the possibility of what can occur is a skill to celebrate not criticise.  Being alive to the risks, dangers and possible outcomes of poor driving is quite often what is seriously lacking in young male drivers, so do not be thinking that your ‘considered’ approach to driving is in any way negative.

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