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When you were first getting your driver's license, what were you afraid of?
Did you fear adverse weather conditions like icy roads? How did you handle them?
Did you initially consider yourself as too incompetent to drive?
Were you afraid of breaking traffic laws?
Were you afraid of getting into an accident?
Did you face any of these situations and how did you handle them?
Are you still afraid of driving?
Literally nothing - I wanted my license so badly and when I got it, I felt free. I was an idiot teen and did a bunch of stuff I wish I hadn't but at the time, I was living life. I live in the south so inclement weather is usually not an issue, and in fact I really enjoy driving in rain for some reason. I guess the only thing I'd say I was cautious of was making sure I knew where the local PD was (small town, there were only 1 or 2 of them at any time).... but even then, when they did catch up to me, they knew my old man and just told them to handle me.
Now that I have kids, I've turned about-face on all that. I drive a hybrid for pete's sake! If 16 year old me knew I'd end up in anything other than a 69 chevelle, he'd spit on me.
I have never been afraid of driving overall, have been scared sometimes when something unexpected happens. It'll happen, life is sometimes scary.
Number one piece of advice I give every new driver I have a chance to talk to :
Be predictable
Like with walking down a semicrowded sidewalk, there are unwritten rules and conventions about how people navigate around each other without talking. Sometimes it's subtle, sometimes it's eye contact, or a wave or a nod. Most of us learn them just by doing.
Driving is the same way, however the bonus is there *are explicit rules that everyone follows (mostly) so that you can predict what other people are going to do, and they can predict what you're going to do. When in doubt, look at what everyone else is doing, and copy it. If you have an older friend or family member who you consider a good driver (not everyone is!!) ask them to talk to you out loud while they're driving around about what they're looking at and deciding.
Other good rules of thumb:
I would argue I'm more afraid now compared to when I got my license.
I moved from a small town to a major suburb, and it is very different. I didn't realize at first why people would hesitate after a light turned green, but quickly discovered that running red lights is so common that you have to wait or risk getting hit.
Distracted driving also seems to be getting progressively worse. At best, it's as "harmless" as someone holding up traffic because they're on their phone at a stoplight. (Disclaimer: I still think this is very bad but just saying it is unlikely to be fatal.) Worst case is when I saw someone turn left in front of me when they very clearly had a red light for a long time, and I saw them holding their phone and not even looking at the road as they turned. Absolutely horrifying.
Maybe. The follow up to this that I see a lot is someone hits their accursed horn (they should deploy the airbag when pressed) and then the distracted driver goes immediately without taking a moment to evaluate whether it's actually safe.
Peer-pressuring leading cars to go by using the horn, distracted or not, without being able to see and judge whether the intersection is clear, is not only unsafe but illegal in most places. The horn is only to be used to signal an imminent danger.
Then we need two horn types. If no one honked, there are certainly people who would never pay enough attention to move. Something like flashing your brights seems even more dangerous (and would possibly not be seen during the day).
I agree that some people will move without looking up, though, and that could end up being fatal if they move into the intersection illegally.
Additionally, while some drivers seem to think there is a 5-10 second sustained fuck-you-other-guy minimum duration requirement, the standard horn can in fact be used for short bursts. A quick little beep or two is usually plenty to draw attention with minimal disturbance in less critical situations.
I'm also frustrated by how many drivers use the horn, but your purported rule about using the horn is stricter than even the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic (which the US and Canada as well as probably a majority of countries worldwide are not party to, but if you're from somewhere where it's been ratified by most nearby countries, like Europe, you could be under the impression "most places" have laws that conform to it), which in addition to allowing use of the horn to avoid an accident also allows its use "outside built-up areas when it is desirable to warn a driver that he is about to be overtaken."
And if we're talking about North America, especially with the US's patchwork approach to regional vehicle laws, I don't think you can accurately claim that it is illegal to use the vehicle horn as described in most places. My home state's driving guidance explicitly states that you should use your horn when another driver is not paying attention or may have trouble seeing you, as well as in circumstances like when passing someone who's turning into your lane. I'm not under the impression my home state is too far on either end of the bell curve when it comes to the strictness of its driving laws compared to other US states either.
I see this but with 100,000 pound tractor-trailers and it pisses me off so much. Something needs to be done about it.
...i was intimidated by the parallel-parking portion of the drivers' test on account of fellow students talking up its difficulty + attrition rate, but it wasn't bad at all and i passed my first attempt without issue...
...i understand that most states don't administer driving tests anymore, just the written portion of the test...
Funnily enough when I was learning to drive, my parents were more worried about parking than I was. Whenever my parents would take me out to practice, 90% of my practice was spent parallel and perpendicularly parking. That practice has paid off thankfully and I can park in basically any situation now.
Weirdly, the only thing I was afraid of was affording auto insurance. Insurance for a male teenager is expensive for pretty good reason statistically, and I had to make sure I was working enough hours to even afford it. Having bills to pay was not something I was used to as a teenager and I was so worried about losing my job and getting my license revoked, which would then make it harder to get a new job.
Nothing as the driver's education teacher took me on the freeway in a standard during rush hour for my first run.
I damn near shit my pants but I'm scared of nothing now ;)
Like many dumb teenagers, I wasn't really afraid of anything. It's easy, when you're young and naive, to think that you're always in control.
Now, at 30, I'm much more afraid (maybe cautious would maybe be a better word) of driving in general - mostly due to other drivers. You could be doing everything right and to the letter of the law, but still end up in a life-altering (or ending) crash.
Bureaucracy.
When I was a young man getting a drivers license was more of an “if” than a “when” because my man child of a father didn’t keep any of my important documents. I had to go through a lengthy period of searching for documents to get a social security card before I could even think about getting a government ID.
But of course the thing that always freaked me out the most was other drivers. They were really unpredictable - they still are, but now I am more familiar with the madness. Sure enough I would lose my first car for a driver who decided to pull out into oncoming traffic.
Generally very little about driving seemed scary, but I've always like driving things like go-karts so it didn't feel that different. That said, I think the two scariest things both conceptually and as I was learning were one-way streets and merging at highway speeds.
I grew up in suburbs and the idea of navigating one-way roads in the city felt pretty foreign. They're also tighter roads and even with GPS can be tricky to juggle all the visual input. Part of it may have also been anxiety about missing a turn or being able to figure out where I was going. They don't stress me out anymore, but I notice they require a much higher level of focus than driving elsewhere.
Learning to merge at high speed was pretty scary because it feels like so much more can go wrong in a much more catastrophic way than on slower roads. Still spooks me sometimes, but the issue is usually other people driving recklessly usually.
I learned how to drive in NYC in my early 20s, so I was more scared of navigating around other cars, pedestrians, and cyclists. It didn't helped the fact, I got my license and then I drove sporadically until 3 years later. And that NYC drivers are notoriously aggressive.
What made me more comfortable was being able to rent a car during vacation in another state. It was nice having a license and being able to have the option to rent for a week and explore. I will say, after I moved out of the city, driving starting to become more relaxing. I still missed the convenience of walking, but going out for a drive isn't as much of hassle.
Now, I'm more scared getting into an accident because I have a baby, so driving more defensively now.
I started driving in Los Angeles in 1987 right before all those highway shootings due to road rage. I remember being extremely scared of driving for a number of years. Like you didn’t even need to be an asshole driver, some stray bullet could take you out. In retrospect, I think it’s affected my driving as a whole. I will rarely go head to head with an aggressive driver because I’m scared of who might behind that wheel. I do drive assertively, but there’s always these calculations going on in my head like - is it worth it.
The other thing that I’m scared of are steep hills with stops midway when driving a stick. I drove a stick in hilly cities for about 25 years and it never quite went away. I have an automatic now, so I don’t encounter that anymore.
Driving in my opinion is somewhat spooky, to the point where I quit a job that became nothing but highway driving, but ultimately it's getting you to where you want to go, and if you're not in a walkable city, you're going to have to deal with it at some point. I don't like driving for long periods of time still, but it's a game of minimizing risk, and most of the time, most people do a good enough job at it that things stay orderly. Refresher Driving and Defensive Driving Courses are a thing if you think that would help, but also exposure also makes it better.
Depending on your neurotype, you may also want to talk to a mental health person if you feel that an attention issue could impair your driving. That was the case with people I know, and it seemed to help them out.
I put off getting my license until I was 21 or 22. I did not, and still don’t, think humans are qualified for the task. By that I mean we aren’t good enough to handle the variety of situations we are likely to find ourselves in during the course of driving. Even as a responsible driver (always sober, never texting, always signaling well) I’ve found myself in a handful of close calls that could have ended in serious injury to myself and others. You’re dependent upon other people being safe to avoid injury and eventually you’ll run into a situation where one person near you has made a mistake.
I used to own a car and drove daily but thankfully I can now live car free and use my feet and public transit for everything. It’s rare I need to drive, maybe a handful of times per year. It’s a numbers game so I can nearly guarantee my safety just by limiting the count of hours spent in a car.
The proliferation of self driving cars on the road makes me very happy. It would be better to have more public transit but I’ll take the win regardless.
I hope for a future where people are socially shamed for driving a car on a public road. It should remain legal for freedom of movement, but be seen as an abnormality.
At first, but when it came time to drive home from work on a mix of snow and ice in a Toyota Echo that hadn't had snow tires put on yet, I got forty minutes worth of solid practice and got good at it. I'd recommend people play around in an empty parking lot to learn how to control the throttle to maintain grip and to correct a slide.
No. I usually find I can quickly become good at anything I choose to spend the time on.
Maybe a little at the very start. Things like knowing when you have the right-of-way can be a little unclear. It's more social anxiety than anything.
A little, because I was driving my parents' cars. It got better when I bought my first. Now I own a more expensive car that isn't paid off yet, and some of that has resurfaced...especially after someone hit my girlfriend's car and totaled it.
Realistically, I'm not afraid of being at fault in an accident, but I'm always afraid someone else's incompetence could cost me a lot of money and time. Or injure me or a passenger. Hypothetically, insurance deals with that, but there are also are a disturbing number of uninsured and license-plate-less
criminalsdrivers.Nope. I've never been in an accident where I was driving, have solid technical driving skills, and am always operating under the assumption that other drivers are trying to kill me and pedestrians are oblivious.
However...getting a phone call that your partner and stepdaughter are being taken to the ER after a car accident, and having to drop everything and head out there for the night, isn't something you ever forget. (Also: shout out to Honda's superb crash safety, and the car automatically dialing 911 over Bluetooth.)
I'm afraid of other people driving.
I drive a car, and ride a motorcycle, and cross the road as a pedestrian/ cyclist.
Please look out for pedestrians & cyclists, especially at intersections and cross walks.
You will likely be fine in your car. Your car may not be fine, but you probably will be.
It is the more vulnerable users of the road you should be mindful of.
Rainy night-time driving still sucks 18 years later.
I did drove drunk once (after a music festival where I was photographer): never again! I was never unsafe and there were no one on the road ('cos 4AM), but I was keenly aware of my reduced reflex and attention.
I didn't want to get a license because I saw no need for one. I rode my bike a lot and took transit. I was OK with it and it felt enough for me. But my parents insisted that I do learn how to drive (I was 17-18 or so). I also didn't want the extra responsibility to drive others.
I was not afraid of anything, nor did I consider myself too incompetent to drive. Once I got my license I was and still am a very good driver in my opinion. I never got into an accident. I wasn't worries about traffic laws. I never tried to push the limits of the laws. I didn't fear accidents. I'm in my 40s now. I think I am a good driver. The only thing I am becoming a little afraid of now is driving at night because of the ridiculously bright head lights on SUVs and pickup trucks. The glare is blinding.
I was only in one very minor accident: I was rear ended at very VERY low speed. Barely even scratched my bumper and it was 100% the other person's fault. If I worry about anything on the road it is other drivers, their lack of skill, them being distracted or impaired, or them being overly aggressive on the road.
Having been into cars my whole life, I was itching to get my license ASAP when I was 16. My ego was pretty inflated as a teen so I never considered myself too incompetent to drive. I was slightly worried about getting into accidents and breaking the law but those fears quickly vanished. The only "adverse" weather condition in my area I'd be concerned about is rain, we don't really experience tornadoes or snowstorms. People seem to forget how to behave on the road once it begins raining, often drifting out of lanes, keeping their lights off and either driving too fast or too slow. I've recently brought my car into the city with me so my suburban driving skills need to be adjusted for the narrow city streets. It's something that I'm slowly getting used to. I am definitely more worried about the rain now within the city since the same drivers I'd encounter in the suburbs would also be here.
i have zero fear driving and love the craziest conditions. i’ma natural for it, but with time you build up confidence.
the only things that matters as a driver is to be patient and predicable. follow the rules of the road, if you’re in the wrong lane for a turn you’re about to miss, drive the long way around safely instead of something unpredictable / dangerous.
that’s all there is to it. if you’re really concerned, take some driving classes — either the normal young drivers or defensive driving etc. everybody should really take a brush up every twenty years or so :)
I grew up watching NASCAR and was a big fan of Jeff Gordon. Played Gran Turismo and Need For Speed games. Tokyo Drift came out the year before I turned 16. I got the same Civic from the scene at the start of F&F 1 where the three of them drive under the semi to steal DVD players or something. I was itching to get my license and absolutely drove like I was trying to become a stunt driver in one of those movies. We got a lot of snow growing up too so any chance we got we were out in the high school parking lot drifting around and whippin' shitties. I got pretty good at pulling the hand brake to do a 180 and parallel park against the curb.
I also did some really stupid stuff. I remember going around 90-100 down a 2 lane and hydroplaning straight through a 4 way stop. When I hit the brakes and realized I couldn't slow down at all I just tried to keep it straight and steer through it. Thankfully no one else was there at the time. I also remember taking friends snowboarding, pushing 100 in the snow in my mom's minivan that I borrowed for the trip with like 5 other kids in the car. Easily could've been a front page news tragedy. What an idiot I was.
Honestly I looked forward to them. That little Civic wasn't powerful enough to break the tires loose unless there was rain or snow on the ground.
One of my teachers said I had "testosterone poisoning". I was cocky and bullheaded about basically everything back then.
I knew where the cops hung out in town. I got two speeding tickets in college, both on road trips though. One officer told me he clocked me at over 120, but dropped the ticket down to 89 in a 65 since it was my first one ever and I think anything more than 25 over could be jail time or something?
I got in two, actually. Taught me a lot about working on cars. Fortunately the '96 Civic was easy to work on. Haven't been in one since (knock on wood).
I had the car towed back to the house both times. Dragged it into the garage and one of my dad's friends helped teach me how to fix it. Bought parts from NAPA with my earnings from my minimum wage bagel shop job.
Depends. If I'm far into the backcountry without cell service I worry about things breaking down on my old rusty truck. I carry some emergency spare parts and an decent tool set though. If my wife and fur-daughter are in the truck I'm also much more careful about what trails I'm willing to attempt. I can still have a bit of a lead foot on the highway too. Honestly I'm less afraid of being in an accident than I am afraid of being "at fault" and dealing with higher insurance rates.
To this day I still think I would've made a decent race car driver. I went to a semi-competitive kart track day and drove a demo cart a few years back, and apparently I drove well enough without ever having driven that cart or that track before that one of the weekend racers I was on the track with asked me if I ever competed or had my own kart. That felt pretty good. If I lived nearer to a track I'd probably buy a kart or maybe build out an MR2 or fox body for SCCA events.
Mostly nervousness about other drivers. And to this day, I'm still not fond of lane changes in dense traffic, like on freeways. And I still hate being tailgated by aggressive drivers who don't leave enough stopping room, or seeing people futzing with their phones, etc.
If it's just me on an empty or sparsely-trafficked road, I love driving, especially when it's the sort of road-trip interstate cruising where you're between cities and traffic has really thinned out.
My mom took me driving on a frozen lake until I was comfortable. It was a weird combination of bumpy and slick that I’ve never experienced anywhere else.
My whole town was a speed trap. I couldn’t afford a speeding ticket, I saw them given out often. It took some time before I could manage keeping track of the cars around me, pedestrians, navigation, watching for deer, and my speed all at once. No cruise control was available to me for years, when I first got a car with it I used it constantly.
Where I grew up, hitting a deer was a question of when, not if. I was afraid of hitting one while going fast, I knew what that did to a car and the people in it. When I was little I was in a car that rolled from hitting a deer. I hit one within my first year as a licensed driver. I wasn’t on a highway at the time so the damage wasn’t as bad as it could have been, it was mostly confined to the hood. Unfortunately it was too warm out to be able to keep it.
Concrete barriers on freeway construction zones. I’ve still never even scraped one, but I still hate them and clench my fists real tight around the steering wheel when I find some.
I got my license specifically to share the driving load with my wife when we decided to have a kid. The only thing I was scared of was that first drive bringing the babe home from the hospital.
I think getting your license in your early thirties helped with no being scared of anything. Honestly the main reason I never had it was laziness.
I was a little nervous about highway driving. Particularly merging onto the highways. I had driven on the highways with my folks while learning, which was no issue. But merging-in always felt a little harrowing.
After I got my license, I avoided the highways when driving to/from school (I didn't go to the high school I should've based on where we lived). But because taking local roads was longer than taking the highway, I ended up taking the highways after a couple of weeks. Probably saved me ~10min each way. Which got me more experience and confidence in merging on to the highways, even when there's a lot of traffic.
Cops and a-holes, but especially a-holes cops. I dunno I was 16 I didn't fear much.
Now I really only fear ridiculous headlights, and torrential rain on the freeway. Have you ever felt your car show down due to the amount of water a semi splashed on you? Not fun.