How Attitude Can Alter Your Driving

Pro-active

In driving terms this means the ability to predict the actions of others rather than waiting to see what they do and then react to it .

Overall the skills taught in these your weeks of driving were quite simply re-active and not the pro-active awareness skills needed for driving in the real world. It is still up to the individual to try to find the addi­tional experience from somewhere - very few ADl's are asked for further lessons after the test has been passed, for reasons of finance and because there is no legal requirement to do so.

Re-active

Literally the opposite to a pro-active driver, the re-active driver always waits for the other driver to do something  before deciding what to do next.

The reason that pro-active awareness is missed out in early driver training however is quite simple. If it isn't in the test, then it doesn't need to be taught! This is not simply the ADl's fault, but also the obvious reaction to publishing the test syllabus and not promoting strongly enough the full range of skills re­quired for driving. Pupils, or more often the parents who are paying for the lessons, are far too wary to pay {or additional motorway training or other additional lessons, preferring instead to impart their own particular skills in these areas to their trusting offspring.

ADI

Official term for a Dept  of Transport  Approved Driving Instructor.

What has this all to do with Attitude, well after learning the basic mechanical skills, followed by a period of developing your awareness of the hazards of the road, you eventually learn to express your personal­ ity through your driving - this is the Attitude that we are talking about. Initially, this is the area that you need to be honest with yourself about.

If you can answer yes to any of the following questions, then your own attitude needs to be assessed in more detail:-

  1. Do you ever use your horn or gesture at other drivers?
  2. Have you ever aggressively defended your space on the road and prevented another vehicle from cutting ahead of you?
  3. Do you find driving these days is less enjoyable?
  4. Do you ever travel over the speed limit in urban  areas?
  5. Do you ever drive too close to other  vehicles?
  6. Have you ever been involved  in a rear-end shunt?

Now before you lose your temper and skip the rest of this chapter, let me explain why often it is your at­titude which can cause you the problem and not the actions of  others.

If you answered yes to question (1.), then you are doubtless seen as quite "normal" in terms of drivers in the UK - but it doesn't mean you are right. Drivers mistake the horn as being some form of defence mechanism, a means of expressing anger or contempt for other drivers - but the same drivers seldom use their horn to prevent the problem from occurring.

If you consider that the correct  purpose  for the horn is - "to warn other road users of your presence"- then perhaps we should adopt the European approach of defensive use of the horn and not aggressive application after the problem has occurred.

Have you ever been overtaken by a vehicle and heard him toot his horn before doing so? The chances  are you have, and you looked to see why he was tooting at you, but you probably didn't notice his na­tionality. Most European countries teach the use of horn for safety when overtaking - to ensure the other driver is aware of your  presence.

In the UK we consider it to be bad manners, or we are too embarrassed to use the horn for such as "trivial" point as protecting our lives when overtaking. Try it, especially when forced to overtake vans or other large vehicles on narrow roads - you'll be amazed at the  difference.

Likewise, instead of wondering whether that vehicle ahead is about to emerge in front of you, toot your horn and grab his attention - he may never have seen you. Of course on the continent of Europe you would flash your headlights for this hazard - but here it would add to the problem and not reduce the  risk. Headlight flashing is now a national obsession and each year accounts for thousands of accidents and near misses, both in the UK with visiting drivers and in Europe when we travel abroad and expect everyone to know what we mean.

Question (2.) is more of a personal problem, the defence of personal space to prevent the intrusion of other ('.!rivers. Again our reasoning is flawed, as to reduce space ahead of us to prevent others gaining access to it only increases the risk to ourselves. It is necessary to try to control this urge and to remind yourself that just because another driver takes the space ahead of you, you aren't being pushed back-. wards in the queue - merely reducing speed for a fraction of a second to allow him into the space. There is little point trying to prevent this driver from completing his manoeuvre once you have allowed him to commence it. In the next chapter, t he correct control techniques will be discussed to prevent this situa­tion from occurring in the first place.

Now we come to a very emotive issue. If you said yes to Question (3.) then you are simply reflecting the feeling of the nation as a whole . Driving used to be fun but now there are too many people trying to do it all at once. Now we are controlled by cameras & speed bumps vehicles are being banned from city cen­tres. In actual fact this is predominantly an urban problem. Rural driving anywhere except around Lon­ don is still enjoyable - ask any of the  Motor ing journalists who frequent the Scottish Highlands or the Lake District to conduct their road  tests.

What is missing is a sense of achievement. We can no longer take pride in travelling from A to B swiftly and efficiently as it is not in our control anymore. We need instead to try to set other goals. Minimise the number of times we are forced to stop. Learn to anticipate hazards earlier and take control of the situa­tion before it controls you. It is because of this problem that almost all of you answered yes to Question (4.). The speed limit in urban areas is set for a reason , which has nothing to do with your personal need  to make a meeting on time. Only your attitude can prevent you from killing a pedestrian.

Questions (5.) and (6.) are similarly linked, in that many of you would have answered no to QS. Without really understanding what too close actually meant , but on Q6. A large proportion of you would have had to answer yes - followed by "but it wasn't my fault". This is the attitude problem that we need to conquer   to our own satisfaction before we consider improving our driving skills and using them for our business.

If you follow another vehicle at a "safe" distance, i.e. that which is prescribed by the Highway Code, and you do nothing more to prevent the risk of a shunt, then chances are you are driving too close most of  the time. You have to consider other  variables:-

ABS

Anti Blockiersystem. Originally a German invention and used for years in aircraft, the term is a Bosch registered trademark for an Anti Lock Braking System to help prevent skidding under    braking.

  • If the driver behind you is too close, when you stop safely, he won't!
  • If the driver ahead of you has ABS and the road is dry, he may stop much sooner than   you can.
  • If the driver behind you has ABS and the road is wet, he may well take longer to stop than   you.
  • If you have ABS and the other drivers do not, then you may stop quicker than the driver behind you or slower than the one ahead of you - and without practice, avoiding either is almost impossible.

Fuzzy Logic

The science of understanding that the universe is not all black and white but rather more complex.    That is only one consideration, but really illustrates that in this world of Fuzzy Logic where there is never a definitive answer, we need to adopt a more flexible approach to the methods we use to protect ourselves.

It is one thing to cause a shunt by driving into another vehicle and quite another to be hit while you are already stationary. Many drivers still think that the latter is blameless on their part whereas the first sce­nario is "always the fault of the driver that hit the vehicle he was following". If you talk to any Insurance Investigator, you will find that this is not the case. Much more is made of the type of vehicles, the age of the drivers, the road conditions etc. etc, although these are precisely the areas that the drivers them­ selves were obviously not considering prior to the accident.

Excuses like "I had to turn right, so I stopped to wait for a gap in the traffic and the guy behind me drove into me" are just not acceptable if the alternative was to drive on and not have the accident! These days we are too wrapped up in who is to "blame" for the accident, who had "right of way" and whether or not one party was "signalling their intention" when the accident occurred. What is more relevant, surely, is  why the drivers did nothing to prevent the accident occurring, why one vehicle thought he could stop, because he "had to turn right" when the car behind him had no idea he was going to do so.

We need to discuss these matters in more detail, which is why after you have taken to time to consider some of these points, then perhaps taken yourself out for a drive to try to assess your own attitude traits we can move on to the next chapter and look at some of the areas of driving skills that you would only learn if you either paid for advanced tuition or received it as part of a corporate training policy in a previ­ous employment situation.