by William Webster –
After a lifetime of truly enjoying driving and constantly trying to improve my skills, how can you improve yours? I’ve put together a few things you can try. Be honest with yourself; assuming you are a good driver can be dangerous, so make sure you really are! You will have the responsibility of transporting friends and family for many years so you should make an effort to be really good at it.
First, driving is a FULL time job; make sure you are concentrating on the task all the time. You should always know at least the colour of the car behind you and beside you. This exercise will help improve your use of mirrors and make you a much safer driver. When travelling, make every effort to maintain the same gap between your car and the one in front. It’s a good exercise when combined with limiting the use of your brakes – the best drivers use their brakes the least.
On dual-lane highways, do not travel in the fast lane or drive directly beside another car for any distance. Driving in the right hand lane gives you two alternate routes of escape when most of the time the left lane only gives you one. If you are going to pass, get on with it! Don’t dawdle by; get past and then return to the right lane when it is clear to do so. Allowing a good gap between cars allows others to move back over to the right lane when they have passed and vehicles to easily merge with traffic at on-ramps and you will not need to use your brakes as much.
Know the car you are following: many high performance cars today can stop from 120 kph in 150 feet. A brand-new pickup will take 200 feet. Can you imagine what an old truck or car requires? Think about this the next time you pull up close to the back bumper of a new Porsche or Corvette at highway speeds; hitting the back of the car in front is always your fault!
You should be able to reverse your vehicle just as well as you drive it forward. Do not avoid reversing into parking slots or parallel parking; practice, practice, practice! Does your car have blind spot mirrors? They are very inexpensive and can make a huge difference to the safety of your manoeuvres.
If you had a choice between a speeding ticket and a driving retest, which would you pick? The correct answer should be the driving test, but that might not be the one you choose. If you are ever required to take a retest, have a few qualified driving instruction hours before you go or you will probably fail. Years of driving are not qualifications for the driving test as you may have dozens of bad habits.
When you are completely confident behind the wheel, you will be more comfortable driving on trips or renting cars overseas, even if they drive on the other side of the road.
*last ticket in 1970!
