First Person Driver: Learning to Drive Diary, Part 3

Problem is, humans have a tendency to speed up as they practice and become comfortable with any particular task. It’s what we expect, be it arithmetic or Chopin or changing diapers. It’s what you hear in everyday speech; people don’t say, “Do you want eggs and bacon?” They say, “Juwanegsinbakn?” That three-second pause became two then one then a brief moment where I braked down to an imperceptible crawl, checked the sidewalk, scanned the intersection, then moved on. Reasonable, I suppose, except for the pesky fact that “imperceptible crawl” equals “not actually stopping”.

Mindfulness (or lack thereof) lies at heart of every bad driving habit. It’s extremely tempting to stop actively processing what’s going on around you and leaving it up to reflex. There is simply too much going on – managing the steering wheel and pedals, watching for vehicles ahead and in your mirrors, checking for sudden pedestrian actions, and that’s just when things are going well. It’s a miracle to me that people who drive regularly don’t all have crippling PTSD or daily attacks of road rage.

An actual Lamborghini Aventador LP 700-4. Because Lamborghini. Click image to enlarge

I thought I was stopped because I’d completed all my usual checks, but in fact I had no awareness of my vehicle’s velocity. That’s dangerous because I can’t be looking in every direction at once. There’s every opportunity for a kid on a bike to come up to the stop sign when I’m looking in another direction. They might not slow down because they’re expecting me to stop. If I just roll on through, the best case scenario is I get their snot smeared all over the passenger window. The worst case scenario, well, let’s not finish that thought.

Oof, sorry for the downer ending. I’m actually really enjoying my driving lessons, but for some reason these articles tend to become very serious affairs. I guess for me there’s a very thin line between “Whee, I’m at the helm of a ton of metal!” and “Egad, I’m at the helm of a ton of metal!”

Ah I know, here’s a unicorn chaser: