Learning To Drive Part 2

Decisions in relation to driving do not appear to be rewarding, in so much as doing the right thing on the road will keep you safe with only the reward of getting from A to B without incident. I spend a lot of my time when teaching people to drive highlighting the possible consequences of tacking risks or not paying attention, to name but a few. Let us think for a second about the choices that face students in relation to their future education and employment prospects. This is something that is planned with the respect and foresight of something that carries the weight of long term stability, a valuable platform from which we are able to build a content and at times happy existence. These decisions take time, guidance and careful planning and that still doesn’t grantee it’s the right one for you. The decisions made while driving can have as profound effect as those you ponder over when planning your future. This may sound dramatic but being injured or changing the course of someone else’s life won’t be a triviality, imagine carrying the knowledge that if you would have been going slower or had not over taken that lorry that someone would still have their mum, daughter and sister, and that could be just the cost of one person’s life. Most of us are lucky to be free from this kind of stain our conscience, only you as an individual can do your best to drive with intelligence and consideration for other as only you will carry the responsibility of what you cause as a result of not doing so.

The way that Driving instructors should teach is to focus on safety, explaining why thing are and are not safe. Some of it may seem ridiculous, for instance, if you are driving at 50MPH along a carriageway and you want to turn left you would need to check you interior and left door mirror before indicating, you are checking for pedestrians and cyclists. Show me a cyclist that does 50MPH let alone a pedestrian. But when you are doing 1-10MPH in heavy rush hour traffic you need that mirror checking habit to keep the pedestrians and cyclists safe, so if we do it all the time we have less chance of forgetting when it’s important.

Insurance companies make it very hard for younger people to get on the road; their statistics tell them that young people are many times more likely to have an accident and just being involved in one whoever is at fault for the incident will raise insurance costs for young people if you are under 25. I know it seems unreasonable that cost are so high but since becoming a driving instructor I have seen young people driving In ways that makes my blood boil, if one can imagine how many others are driving recklessly at that moment in time it is inevitable that a percentage are going to be the cause of an accident. The problem insurance companies have is they are there to make money, if they don’t they would not survive to insure anyone. They have a no claims system, the more years you go without an accident the lower your insurance cost is. The no claims system gives the insurance companies a picture of the risk of a driver crashing, with young people they air on the side of caution because they have no idea of your attitude toward safety or how well trained you are to cope with driving, after all it wouldn’t be wise to let a complete stranger in to your home on the hope that they wouldn’t steal from you, we learn to trust over time. Car Insurance is getting lower as a result of the Black Box, this is installed in your car and reports back on your driving style, if you constantly break speed limits and accelerate fast you will get a friendly phone call explaining that you will no longer be insured if it carries on. There are other measures in place too as a way of lowering insurance and I know more is on its way.