Thursday, April 22, 2010
Driving lessons and butterflies both inside and outside the stomach
This week many news outlets carried a story about a learner driver from Oxford who managed to flip her instructor's car on only her second lesson; a "freak incident" that won't exactly fill her with confidence for her future as a motorist.
As so much of learning to drive is about confidence, as I know from bitter experience, I can't help but fear the worst for the poor woman involved.
It was on only my first foray onto the road that I was very nearly side-swiped by a speeding motorist who was recklessly fleeing from police pursuit. The incident set me back a long way and to this day I maintain that it delayed me taking my test by around six months.
But then my family has history when it comes to driving tests and driving lessons. My mother, never the most reassuring of drivers, gave up driving when I was not yet ten. But this was not before she'd mounted curbs, ploughed into hedges and reversed into several trees. Very early on in life my sisters and I were conditioned to believe that even the shortest of drives would inevitably result in a near-death experience.
Some years later, my maternal grandmother told me that my mother had only succeeded in passing her test (at the 12th time of asking) because the examiner, a superstitious fellow and friend of my grandmother's, had decided not risk his luck on a 13th attempt. "I'm not getting in a car with her again. She's passed," he's reputed to have said.
Then there is my sister. She failed her driving test after swerving into a ditch in order to avoid colliding with an Adonis Blue butterfly.
I'm just grateful that familial driving history plays no part in calculating the price of a motor insurance policy.
Image © Pengannel via Flickr under Creative Commons Licence
As so much of learning to drive is about confidence, as I know from bitter experience, I can't help but fear the worst for the poor woman involved.
It was on only my first foray onto the road that I was very nearly side-swiped by a speeding motorist who was recklessly fleeing from police pursuit. The incident set me back a long way and to this day I maintain that it delayed me taking my test by around six months.
But then my family has history when it comes to driving tests and driving lessons. My mother, never the most reassuring of drivers, gave up driving when I was not yet ten. But this was not before she'd mounted curbs, ploughed into hedges and reversed into several trees. Very early on in life my sisters and I were conditioned to believe that even the shortest of drives would inevitably result in a near-death experience.
Some years later, my maternal grandmother told me that my mother had only succeeded in passing her test (at the 12th time of asking) because the examiner, a superstitious fellow and friend of my grandmother's, had decided not risk his luck on a 13th attempt. "I'm not getting in a car with her again. She's passed," he's reputed to have said.
Then there is my sister. She failed her driving test after swerving into a ditch in order to avoid colliding with an Adonis Blue butterfly.
I'm just grateful that familial driving history plays no part in calculating the price of a motor insurance policy.
Image © Pengannel via Flickr under Creative Commons Licence
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posted by Fuse @ 3:15 AM 
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