What makes a 'good' driver - www.BIGTOM.org.uk

Driving Lessons in Peterborough.  Driving Lessons in Grantham.

What is the ultimate test of someone’s driving ability?  Well, organisations that are interested in ‘advanced driving’ will assess you in 3 ways; on roads you are not familiar with (at least that is what they aim to do), demand that you make as much ‘progress’ as possible, and ask you to verbally describe what you are planning to do BEFORE you actually do it.

 

Why does driving on unfamiliar roads in particular help to assess how good a driver someone is?

One of my Learners who is coming up to Test soon told me the other day that he recently drove his Dad to Birmingham.  It was a 150 mile round trip.  It means that he is practicing driving on roads that he is not familiar with and he is also practicing the type of journeys that he will be doing once he passes.  Unless you only intend to drive locally, it really will develop your driving ability to drive in unknown areas....  assessing severity of  bends, identifying unfamiliar traffic signs, negotiating around unusual road designs etc.  There is a great diversity of road planning and design across the country and if you will be driving across the country after you pass, does it not make sense to venture out of your immediate comfort zone when training?  A good measure of anyone’s professional ability is to see how well they perform outside of their normal environment, that holds true in many walks of life.  The value that experiencing diversity gives you personally, is a great asset and one that will pay you back many times over.  A slogan I often use in regard to this is “drive more, experience more, learn more”.  So clocking up driving hours on roads that you are not familiar with is always going to be time well spent.

The term ‘make progress’ is simply looking at driving in a slightly different way to normal.  It is a more clinical, business like way of driving.  There should be no breaking of the law, this isn’t about exceeding speed signs, but more about ‘efficient driving’.  To drive efficiently, you need to be making decisions that ensure you spend more time travelling and less time stop/starting.  It is a no nonsense approach to driving from A-B, but still ensuring you do not compromise any other road users in the process – so being considerate, and being safe whilst busily ‘making progress’.  And what that adds is pressure, remember the intention is to ask you to do this on roads that you do not know – so you don’t have the luxury of just ‘holding back’ to see how something you are not too sure on, pans out.  You actually control the outcome, rather than wait for the outcome.  As the England rugby boys experienced yesterday playing against S.Africa, Thinking Correctly Under Pressure (T CUP) is a true skill that requires dedication and hard work to develop.  I often make reference to sport in my training, because an elite sportsperson is a thinking sportsperson – and that is exactly the same in the driving world.

Lastly, being able to describe what you are considering, and how that affects your driving, BEFORE you actually do those driving actions, will force you to plan in advance.  Reading and anticipating a situation, analysing it, deciding on a course of action, and implementing those actions is one thing, having enough time to firstly prioritise what bits of that you need to say, and secondly actually get the words out, can only be accomplished if you plan far enough in advance.   The reason this is good is not so you can bore the pants off all your friends/family in the car, but it will make you a better driver.  You wont be surprised by events as you will have already anticipated them, your driving actions will be smoother and more controlled.  

Observing a 'good driver' is very deceptive, the outward signs of control, calmness, politeness to others, mask an awful lot of work that is going on which is not so apparent. 

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