Learning to drive, but I ain’t got wheels, roundabouts are the hardest thing
With apologies to Tom Petty.
My wife has been learning to drive this year. Her goal is to get her full licence by the end of the year.
It’s a good goal and I fully support her in her endeavours.
It’s not easy though.
I tried teaching her last year in my car, but it’s a manual transmission and trying to steer and fiddle with the gear stick and clutch proved a bit too much or her at the time.
So this year she is taking professional lessons from the AA in an automatic transmission car.
Yes it’s not cheap, but we wanted to see if she could actually do it, and I said that if she could actually drive, then I’d sell my car and get an automatic.
I’ve never owned an automatic before and only really driven on once when we were on holiday a few years ago, and I hated it.
They tell me that they are better these days. I’m yet to be convinced.
Today was my wife’s third lesson with the AA, and as with the other lessons, I went along as the back seat driver.
I quite like her instructor – he’s a nice chap, quite friendly with nerves of steel. While I’m having a heart attack in the back seat, he just calmly says “You’ll want to go a bit more to the right so we don’t hit that parked car in front.”
Remember this is his brand new car we are driving. I would have been screaming in terror at this point.
We went out to a quiet street that he uses as a warmup, and my wife did some circuits, practicing left and right turns, U turns and not hitting pedestrians, dogs and lampposts.
Then the plan was to head down to the waterfront and drive along there for a bit to practice going around the roundabouts and up some long straight streets where she could get some real speed up.
That went quite well. It only took a couple of goes and one bump over the edge of the roundabout, (turned in a bit tight) but she got the hang of it pretty quickly. To her credit she didn’t freak out when she made a mistake (as much as I did in the back seat, just quietly) and got back on track again.
We did another circuit and then we pulled over so the instructor could talk her though a few points, and suddenly that was the lesson over with.
Time to go home.
Normally the instructor drives us home, but tonight my wife said confidently, “So I’ll drive home then shall I?”
And drive home she did.
We didn’t hit anything or run anyone over. (She did park a bit closer to my car than I would have liked. But at least she didn’t hit it)
So it looks like I’ll be buying a new car soon, which is a bit of a shame, because I like my car.
Oh well. 2017 is a year of challenges, changes and general awesomeness, so I guess this will be just one more good thing to add into the mix.
I wonder if there is a car dealer around here that takes STEEM…
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The days of driving lessons are over for me thankfully. I laughed at your panic in the backseat while the instructor was being so calm about the parked car....lol.
I know the feeling. My son got his license a few weeks back. Terrifying!! He's driving like a pro now, so stick it out! New car's are horrible. It took me a year to get used to my new car and I still hate it!!!😂
I'm sure I'll like the new car... at some point.
It was just nice to finally have a car with a decent sized engine that didn't just limp along.
Well see how the test drives go. ;-)