Feeling Nervous?

Are you're feeling nervous about starting driving for the first time? I've recently written a little about how people often feel nervous when they are in the car.
Describing how it's a very normal feeling when we are out of our comfort zones, and how your instructor is in the car to co-drive with you.
Certainly in the early stages of learning the responsibility of safety is mainly resting on the driving instructor's shoulders, which then gradually passes over onto the students shoulders.

I have recently been to America driving on the wrong side of the road. I didn't know instinctively which way to look or what I was looking for. The road signs and paintwork were unfamiliar as was getting my road positioning in very large lanes. I felt like a complete novice. The good news is that feeling like a learner has given me a fresh empathy for what learner drivers go through in the car.

If you live in the Folkestone, Hythe, Dover or Hawkinge area and are thinking about starting to to drive this year, come test out my new found empathy with a special offer of buy 5hrs of driving lessons and get 5 free .

Driving in Dallas Texas

Are you crazy? Driving in Dallas is like driving in the centre of London but on 5 lanes each way - sped up to speeds of 60 mph. Its a bit like driving on the M25 but with more lanes and vehicles overtaking you on both sides.

In a multi lane road in the US, the right hand lane is for turning off on the right and the left is for turning left and sometimes an HOV (High Occupancy Vehicle) Lane. That means you stay in the middle 3 lanes depending on which direction and exit you're taking next.

So you're in a middle lane and someone suddenly remembers they're taking the next exit. This often means that they cut you and 3 other lanes up leaving just feet of clearance at 60mph, and this is a common occurrence.

Some of the cars play the road like a classic computer game -like all the other cars are only there to be dodged around so they can get to the winning post first.

I guess you could find a safe way to drive in this environment, but the simplest definitely seems to miss it out altogether and drive around it.

Driving a Dodge Ram

Well now, for all those Brits that live in a small country and drive small cars I thought I would blog about a true American experience. Driving a truck.

At a rough guess half the vehicles on the roads in Texas are trucks, not the type of truck that you might think - like a scaffolding lorry, but a pickup truck like this Ford F150.









Which now looks like this....









But I didn't get to drive this Ford....

Oh no, my sister-in-law drives this beast. A Dodge Ram 2500











Yes this is what I got to drive, a V8 4.6 litre engine that gets 15mpg around town. It has 'Flow Master' exhaust system, and yes it was automatic. You put your foot down and it growls. Sigh.
Imagine learning to drive in this monster.

Christmas in the USA

The classic American Traffic light.









A classic Texan road scene, this road is 45MPH, 3 lanes wide each side.





I figured I had to take a picture of this iconic flag.

The human element

How do you pass a driving test? After all, a driving test is only a short little drive, 35-40 min around town. It may or may not include dual carriageway or an emergency stop and normally it will include 2 of the 4 manuvers, though never 2 parking ones - isn't that nice?
For anyone who has had lessons from an ADI (Approved Driving Instructor) this should be acheivable. So why do so many people fail?

For those of you who have taken a driving test and failed, you'll appreciate that most people fail their driving test not because they don't know how to drive but because of the human element; nerves, which feed negative thinking and emotions leading to a lack of confidence and self-belief.

How do you think people pass their driving test? What do you think the examiner is looking for?

As a driving examiner I would be asking myself this question, would I feel safe passing this driver on the way home tonight, if I gave them a pass certificate today?
Another way that they might ask the question is, do I like their driving? Although there are some set objective requirements that need to be met, there is a whole lot of subjective interpretation of a person's drive.

It's impossibile to be completly objective. One's life experiences have to colour what an individual defines as important. So to a certain extent, unless you know the examiner, which would be unethical to be tested by them, you are in a lucky dip senario. You can not predict what they will mark as more important and what their own personal preferences are.
But you can do general things, such as drive on your test like you have your Mum in the car if the examiner is female and your Dad if they're male. The main thing you could do is adjust your drive to keep your passenger/examiner comfortable as all good drivers should do anyway.

Lets explore this, if you have a comfortable examiner you have a person who is more likely to answer YES to the question: Do I like their drive? How do you make a person comfortable? Well clearly you do need to be a good driver, with skills. You need to come off as confident, how can you achieve this, well chatting to your examiner in appropriate moments. This relaxes them and interests them. Can you imagine it's not much fun for them to sit in a car all day with emotional, stoney quiet, nervous wrecks - as this willl always transalate to a jerky, unintresting drive.

Sometimes people are amazed they have passed their test, most people are their harshest critic and it is somtimes the desision that they have failed that they then relax and think fine lets just drive.

Remember that your examiner is a person. They have interests, hobbies, hopes, goals and challenges in their life, just like you. As with any situation in life where you have to accomplish something with someone else, the task is so much easier if you can find some common ground.

Mastering the voices

Did you know that driving could be broken down into 3 key skills

Learning to Dance

Mastering the voices

Relational spacing

You're probably thinking, what is this person on about!, well listen up.

1. Controlling the car is nothing more than synchronising your hands and feet to move in harmony, just like dancing.
2. Some people have an internal dialogue or voices, even if you don't, your thoughts, emotions and values will trigger physical responses.which affect your dancing and your spacial relationships. So this is the core through which everything is defined. Are you the boss of your voices?
3. Relational Spacing describes your speed and position in relationship with everything around you.

Imagine that you don't worry about taking the wing mirrors off parked cars...
Imagine a bus approaches on a narrow road with cars parked either side...
Imagine the voices say miss the bus!!! NOW!!!!!
What action do you think is likely to happen next? Anybody missing a wing mirror?

Imagine you're very concerned about slowing down the people behind you....
Imagine you're approaching a bend at 60mph road
As you approach the corner your voices have a fight,
"But I don't want to slow the car down behind me"
"But you can't go round the corner at that speed"
Finally sense prevails and a voice shouts "brake!!!"
The question is, was it in time? Did you stay on your side of the road? Did you manage to change gear or did you stall?

Hopefully you see that in these scenarios, the voices have control of the car. These voices are mainly fear-based and some of this is healthy for staying alive, but in these scenarios the fear overrides and produces unwanted results.
Learning to drive is about training your thoughts, emotions and values so you are in control not the voices in control of you.