Learning To Drive!
A lot of my posts are about bad or weird things that happen to me, but thankfully I don't have too many more of them. Most of my experiences are happy and don't include angry people I swear! :)
Last year in October I sat my theory test and finally got my learner’s permit. After several hour long lessons in a car park with my mum, @minismallholding, as my patient and also terrified driving instructor, I finally took to the road.
Recently I’ve been doing more driving than my usual 15 minute drive to work. The other day I was going to drive my sister to her gymnastics and back. It’s a 25 minute or so drive and the trip home is in the dark, so I get to try night time driving.
Right near the start of the trip we pulled up to a roundabout. It was a little busier than I was used to, but I had driven in heavy traffic before so I thought it’d be fine. I ended up missing a spot where I could’ve slotted in, and had to wait a little longer. This resulted in the driver behind me beeping their horn. Not just a short beep. This wasn’t even an annoyed HOOOOONK. This beep lasted over 10 seconds. They just lay on the horn until I finally found a spot to slot into.
I understand they were annoyed, what I don’t get is what they were hoping to achieve.
I had L plates on and was clearly a learner. Beeping at a learner is going to stress them out and knock their confidence so they’re even less likely to get on with it and move into the island. I’m lucky that my mum was very calm and I managed to take the next spot. I’m not sure I’d want to know what would’ve happened if I’d missed another spot.
As far as I’m aware beeping is used to warn other drivers, not to signal that you’re mad. Beeping like that (I’ve never heard anything like it and I’ve seen learners do much worse when my mum has been driving) is insane and I think it’d psych out any driver - not just learners.
Later on in the drive was something that was partially my fault. There is a junction between two main roads (there’s even an accident in the google maps photos that shows just how bad it is) and I was turning left. Excuse my appalling drawing, but here’s a quick diagram of how it all played out.
from google maps
The yellow is the left slip lane I was in. My mum had warned me beforehand that this part was difficult even for her in heavy traffic. The two blue arrows are where the main problem came from. The traffic lights generally worked in such a way that there was only ever about 5 seconds of time for people in the yellow to go safely. Cars would constantly catch up to form an almost constant stream in the direction of the blue arrows.
When I first pulled up, the cars starting at the blue arrows had just pulled off, and if I’d continued at the same speed I could’ve slotted in with plenty of space to spare. Unfortunately I did what I usually do and played it safe. I came to a stop and checked for a space. Bad idea. There were no spaces, and a huge truck was right behind me queued up! I couldn’t see anything behind him so was stuck waiting for a miracle. When I finally noticed that the lights had changed and we had our 5 seconds I started to go, but several of the cars in the queue behind me had overtaken us, so the truck and I had to wait. Thankfully the truck went around me and I could see.
As I went to go, a blue car was indicating right and pulling over by what seemed like two lanes.
(Brace yourselves for another drawing)
from google maps
I am the black cross car. The blue car created what I thought was a gap by pulling over two lanes. What I didn’t expect though was as he became in line with me, he’d pull over a lane to the left with his right indicator still on. Thankfully I found another gap afterward to slot in, and I was on my way. What surprised me was that everyone was sensible here and no one held their horn for the entire duration of the backup.
The drive back in the dark I did without any problems at all. I’d quite like to get better at that turn but the only way to do that is to try again… in heavy traffic. If I stuff up it’s not just “try again”. I could cause a serious accident.