Day 121: Driving

Hi again everyone!

Before I get to the topic of the post- it turns out I managed to skip days 110 through 119, or at least the numbers- I didn't think it would be this hard to keep up with, but evidently I've gotta edit the past ten posts soon to fix the titles.

Anyways, today I'm gonna be talking about driving- both my (limited) experience with it, and my thoughts on the process of learning. Now I'm home for the foreseeable future, it's something I've gotta start doing, so I figure this is a good time to talk about it.

Driving seems to be a very paradoxical thing. It almost feels natural in some way to keep a vehicle following a road, be it straight or somewhat meandering. On the other hand, some maneuvers (like, say, three point turns) feel very forced and awkward (and in my case, usually end up being 5 to 7 point turns). The same is true for the theory part- some laws are very simple or logical, whereas others seem a bit arbitrary. Fortunately, most of those more arbitrary laws don't come up often- I remember one on the test was relating to how far you need to stay behind a fire truck, but realistically, there are enough factors that it's arguably better to play it by ear than to be focused on a set number.

One thing I was thinking about was how driving skills can be learned from unexpected sources. I'm convinced that simple things, like pushing shopping carts, can help learn driving skills. It's not so much learning how to use a steering wheel as it is learning how wheeled vehicles move- to turn around, you have to be moving, either forward or backward, since cars can't have the wheels turn independently. The nice thing is, it's easy to correct mistakes with a shopping cart- they're unpowered, so the risk of causing damage is significantly lower, and they're light enough that you can usually just pick them up a little if you really need to fix something.

The other way to learn skills that I find useful, though less widely available, is to drive things like golf carts. It's a good transition between shopping carts and real cars- they're smaller and slower (or to put it simply, safer), and often don't have distractions like turn signals, radios, gears (depending on the vehicle, of course). They're a good way to learn skills like staying centred on a road, doing turns (like 3 point turns or u-turns), accelerating and stopping comfortably, etc. More importantly though, they're a great way to build confidence without having to drive a "real" car- a healthy amount of cautiousness is always important, but too much can lead to very distracted driving.

Anyways, that's gonna be it for today- hopefully you enjoyed this post!