This blog will have a major tip within it that will help you to understand how to get your driving licence faster.
When we learn new things that involve physical activity of some sort eg playing a musical instrument, snow boarding, driving a car, playing a new sport, it will take a while for the body to learn what to do. It may involve an element of co-ordination skills between different limbs, intricate movement of a hand, wrist or even finger tips (bowling in cricket for example), it may require a degree of multi-tasking where one hand is doing something while a foot does something else (changing gear in a car for example). It can sometimes take a while for us to learn how much of a particular action to do to achieve the mini-goal, so leaning the body in a certain direction that we are not used to, or looking in a certain direction for a certain duration or at a critical time, bending the knees at a certain time, by a certain amount. These things take a while to perfect, we are often busy receiving feedback via our senses while we learn these techniques - often that will mean actually learning what a certain feeling in the body, or sound that is made means whether that be for a good outcome or not so good. We often learn from these experiences in a very dynamic way, through making mistakes, and that experience is very valuable, even necessary. It can be frustrating, incredibly frustrating in fact, to teach the body to take a certain action, or react for a given prompt because these things rarely happen quickly, and sometimes, while in the process of learning and making mistakes, it can hurt (think gymnasts, skiers and cyclists).
So now let's focus on what you are doing at the moment, learning to drive, and see how this relates to your experiences. In the early days, as an absolute beginner, you will be bombarded with the above. Your eyes will work hard, your hands will be busy steering, changing gear, applying the handbrake, putting signals on, and your feet have the brake, clutch and gas pedals to deal with - all with varying degrees of pressure or resistance felt when you press the pedal, all with varying degrees of intensity needed and even range of movement. If you are naturally dominant on one side eg right handed and footed, then you will suddenly be expecting your left hand and foot to step up to the plate and get active. Wow! If that wasn't enough to be getting on with, there will be a need to do certain jobs at very specific times, and often whilst doing others eg approaching a T junction to emerge left requires you to put the clutch all the way down with the left foot, while the right foot very lightly presses the brake pedal to bring the car to a smooth controlled pause while the hands initially steer to the left to position the car over to the left, and then the left hand needs to apply the handbrake and select first gear *gulp*
The good news is, in the majority of cases, all the above starts clicking into place within about 4 hours, so typically within the first day of the BIG TOM Intensive Driving Course - there will be exceptions to that of course, but generally it is true. However, no sooner do you start getting competent of the physical actions needed to drive a car smoothly, under control and efficiently, then there becomes a need to pay attention to HOW you drive the car around so that it is safe and courteous to others - and this is the bit where some learners will get their driving licence faster than others. Don't think about stalling, rolling back, selecting the wrong gear, braking too hard here, I've done that bit, what I'm now bringing your attention to is, how you are expected to behave on the roads, when you are driving the car. Try not to get those two things mixed up.
For example, when driving on a road, you can see up ahead that there is something that is going to require you move over to the right to pass it. Let's say it is a bus at a bus stop. As a general rule, before you even start steering away from the bus, you should use your eyes to check if it is safe to carry on with your plan, consider whether a right signal would be required, think about how the position of the car in the road will help achieve your mini-goal, assess what speed you should do this at, and whether that will require a change of gear and do all of those things before you give it one final check with your eyes, to make sure it is still safe to do your plan. And be alive to the fact that often in driving, things change quite quickly, so having the ability to anticipate what you would need to do and how you would do it, should something occur eg the bus pulls away sharply from the bus stop before you have got to it.
The above "routine" if you want to see it in that way can be summarised as:
Mirrors
Signal
Position
Speed (and gears)
Look
It is a sequence of driving actions that makes sure what you intend to do is actually safe before you do it, and it forces you to consider what needs to happen with your car in order to do the desired mini-goal. I cannot tell you how massive this point is. You can of course ignore this. Plenty do. But generally, those people that do, don't get their driving licence fast.
One of the problems that can occur is that pupils learning to drive are influenced by the driving they see on a daily basis or by the attitudes of others around them who might be saying how easy it all is, and what a waste of time it is learning "routines". As a consequence, those people, through no real fault of their own, don't appreciate the importance of learning HOW they should be driving around on the roads. They are thinking that the mere fact that they have achieved the first goal of how to drive will do, it wont, it really, really wont, you have to learn the key concepts of how you drive around on different types of road, in different driving conditions. Have you tried learning rugby and ignoring the advice of your coach about how to scrum or tackle? This is all about making decisions, and realising there are consequences to the decisions that we all make in life.
BIG TOM Driving School (0800 689 4174) 5 Day Intensive Driving Course in Peterborough, Grantham, Sleaford, Stamford, Bourne, Lincoln
