Learning to Drive
An overview
To Supervisors and Learner Drivers
Teaching people driving can be a rewarding and also a fun experience. However, there are hazards along the path to becoming a licenced driver. Some learner drivers can use the brakes too much, or not enough, and degrees in between. This also applies to the use of accelerator. I have seen students steer too early or too late, some have pressed the accelerator instead of the brake and vice versa. This is why the learner is best kept in a quite area with little traffic until adequate skills are developed.
Driver education is not well understood by most people in Australia. Licence tests are a set standard of achievement, but how to reach this standard is left largely to the individual to achieve. Many people make use of driving schools to obtain their licences, while others simply take the test and hope for the best.
Under-preparation for the practical test used to be commonplace and some people still leave it until the last minute. The test isn’t overly difficult but it does require some degree of skill to pass.
Learning to drive is done in stages:
- Starting
- Stopping
- Steering
- Scanning with ‘eyes like an eagle, seeing everything’
- Practising lots of hours
- Considerable experience at roundabouts, traffic lights, stop signs
- New encounters
- Increasing your understanding
- Learning how to fix things when they go wrong
- Developing good habits.
Content courtesy of Ray Griffiths at Robina Driving Academy who has generously provided the first 2 Chapters from his book The Learners Handbook as a free resource.
Using a professional Driving Instructor who can guide you through this process will ensure your training is thorough, and you are taught much more than how to pass a test, you learn how to be a safer driver!
