I'm sorry about dwelling on the same topic, but driving does seem to be the first thing i do every morning these days. I thus dedicate another post to it, and also to dear doc friend Nidhee, who has very carefully formulated "The 4 psychological stages of a beginner in driving":
Stage 1 - Phase of Confusion. The ABC of driving is apparently simple enough. Accelerator. Brake. Clutch. The theory of it is easy to understand. However, when a beginner does step on these 'pedals' (which i must say, work much simpler in a bicycle!), its pretty mysterious how this car thing moves! And thus one keeps wondering, where the hell's what! Even more so, when one forgets to take off one's footwear, and thus, cannot 'feel' any of the pedals!
Stage 2 - Phase of enlightenment. One finally figures out which pedal is which! And how the car moves! But there's a catch - the gears! Now what the hell is that? And why the hell did they pick 'H' of all letters to desgin this box! H! Thus, the enlightenment needs to be extended. Of course, that process definitely includes going to the 5th gear instead of the 3rd, and also, the reverse gear instead of the 4th, much to the instructor's wrath!
Stage 3 - Phase of Pseudo-confidence. Point to be noted - this phase happens to be our favourite ;) You think you're running the show. You honk at the right places, turn the steering-wheel to the right degree, gears going good, pedal pushing better than ever, but, but, but... you're in for a surprise! I hear, most people finish their driving lessons at this stage, thinking they can drive for the rest of their lives, they own the road, they've conquered it! Apparently not. Which leads us to stage 4!
Stage 4 - Phase of reality. One decides to now take daddy's car for a nice long drive. And what happens? Everything is wrong somehow! The car vibrates noisily, jumps up when one releases the clutch, everything is haywire! And then it dawns upon the beginner (yes, still the beginner!), that one never really drove the car! It was the instructor, ALL ALONG!
And thus, one goes through the first 2 stages again (but this time, for REAL), and then converts the 3rd stage into the "confidence" stage! Well, hopefully!
Yours "i havent even crossed stage 2!"ly
Signing off...
12 comments:
Which is exactly why you need to repeat your course.
Listen to wise old men, Divs.
:)
nik - LOL! It hall be repeated, in oz land ;) In my bro's car probably :P
hey nik it really does not help to do the same mistake twice man!
n div i agree with the pedal concept way more easier in cycles!
Lol! funny post.. right when Im considering taking up driving classes as well:)
nj - thanks for taking my side!:D Its your post! :)
sementi - They're boring! But again, they're essential n all ;) So take your pick!
You repeat it a second time so that you can identify the mistakes you'd made the first time around and then rectify them.
Because I don't think 20 classes is anyway near enough to be even road-ready.
And the second time around, you can forget the general road-driving (because you'd have become competent at that by then), and focus on oft-neglected areas like simple reversing, reverse parking, parallel parking, fish-parking, T-parking, stopping and starting on inclines (believe me, an absolute essential when it comes to having to negotiate bridges and fly-overs), improving your U-Turns, and so on.
And Divs, NEVER practice to drive with your footwear off. It is a very, very bad driving habit. And I know all driving instructors insist on taking off footwear, and mine did too, and that led to all sorts of problems later on, for me. So practice driving ONLY with your footwear ON. Otherwise it will become very difficult for you to change that habit (it took A LOT of time for me).
And oh, look, a post on driving on my blog!
How wonderrr-full!
nik - Look who's a pro! God... thats too much info on driving for me to put in my rebel-against-driving mindset for now! But i do agree. One must practice... am sure u'll be proud of me (if)when i tell u i can drive comfortable ;)if i wear my footwear nk, i cannot feel the pedals! And just end up getting yelled at :D :D Wat to do!
Ok. Do that at your own peril.
Hrrrumph.
Youngsters these days.
Never listen to wise advice.
nik - sorry old chap ;)we learn the hard way!
Read this blog after year and you would want to say " What the hell was the beag deal :)
I at times wonder how easily riding the bike comes to us when we struggled so much initially. I guess the same would apply to car, skating , swimming .........
vinod - I sincerely hope so! :)
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