Sodding roundabouts

[hentzau]

It's suddenly occured to me that driving instructors have worked out a pretty good scam. They make me pay them £40 a week, in exchange for which I am scared out of my wits non-stop for two hours.  It's the kind of thing Machiavelli would be proud of.

Comments

[_jenjen_]

Is there something wrong with your driving instructor? It's really not good that the driving is scaring you so much.

Roundabouts freaked me out a bit to start with, too, but I found that once I'd cracked the secret roundabout code they weren't too bad. Except when you come up against somebody like my dad who whizzes round even the smallest of roundabouts at 40mph in fourth gear and never ever signals. Luckily, drivers like my father are few and far between.

[hentzau]

I find life in general terrifying. Driving is just a natural extension of both that and being put in control of a ton and a half of machinery with complicated controls that, if I fuck up, can very easily kill other people or (infinitely worse ¬_¬) myself. Thus there is a lot of pressure to not fuck up.

[_jenjen_]

But the whole point of being in a car with a driving instructor is that they are not going to /let/ you fuck up and hurt somebody. You should be able to trust them to take charge and get you out of any situation you can't handle. I had one horrible moment on my third driving lesson when I was faced with a roundabout and this car did something really scary and I panicked and took my hands off the wheel and closed my eyes - my teacher completely took charge, got me through the roundabout and beyond and we parked somewhere until I'd calmed down, at which stage he generously refrained from shouting at me for being such a prat.

I completely trusted him to get me out of any situation like that, until I was able to handle it all myself. A state of being which will come much faster if you can relax a little, knowing that you ain't going to kill anybody. If you don't feel happy that your instructor can help you get out of things that you can't handle, then perhaps he's not the right instructor for you.