Driving

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People spend the first 16 years of their lives not having to notice anything about driving because somebody else was doing it and than retrain their brains to absorb things about driving and tune out things they used to look at while passengers.

It's training the brain to pay attention to the right things and tune out things that aren't part of driving,like looking at houses,they aren't going to run out in front of you,so you shouldn't even see them. Truck drivers train their brains to notice bridge heights, nobody else has to bother even noticing them. The rest of the population just tunes them out.

Route 10 is the main street through my town,most people in town probably couldn't even tell somebody that,they have no reason at all to absorb that information and don't even notice all the signs. The signs are irrelavant to them because they know where they are and where they are going,they live here.

Driving is infomation overload until you train your brain to tune out whats irrelavant to driving and tune into what is relavant.

If a parked car had an expired license plate,bald tires and a dented fender most people would drive past it and not even notice any of it,they would barely notice the car. A cops brain is trained to notice the plate had an expired sticker,a guy thats sells tires would notice the tires,a guy who did auto body repair would notice the dent.The plate,tires and dent are irrelavant to most people,so they can look right at them and not see them. They are paying attention to whats relavant to them.

I have my driver's license and everything, but I don't drive. My fears were the things that were making me safe when driving, but right now those fears have gotten to me and now I don't think I want to drive again. I'm really bad at timing turns and such, and because of that I hate making the people behind me in line mad at me. Maybe someday I'll get over it and start driving again, but right now I don't want to drive.

All I can say about driving a car is I never had the confidence to attempt it
and the $$$$'s to afford the expenses of it. Of the few aspies I seen
drive, they are ok! or overcautious!

Sincerely,
Ghosthunters

I hope you know I am a really aggressive driver. I almost always smoke the tires, go five to ten miles over the speed limit, and burn rubber. As a result my gas milage is awful, but my car is pretty damn peppy.

Only a few times I have been scared, and most NT's would be too.

I'm somewhere in the middle on the fear spectrum. When moving I'm more focused and do all the right things like shoulder checks, signalling and following at a safe distance. At low speeds I can be rough on the car. Once in a while I misjudge the edge of the curb when coming around a corner, and give the poor vehicle a nasty bump.

When I got my license I was in my mid-40's, and it took me four tries to pass the exam. The only thing that helped was lots of practice. My greatest fear is of zoning out while driving, and a few times I've caught my mind wandering off in pursuit of a piece of music. (For this reason, I leave the radio off while the car is in motion.)

I never knew it was possible to get a 1985 Ford Laser up to 160km/h until I was running late for a gig. Just made it. Then there was the time that I drove band from Melbourne to Canberra, 4 hours behind schedule. I got done at 132kmh on the Hume Highway and if the copper hadn't had to knock off 3k's I'd have done my licence. Thank Christ he didn't get me when I caught myself doing 150 just past Seymour. This was in a 1992 Tarago!!

I am a terrible driver. I'm fairly fearful of just the act and while I was getting lessons the instructor kept saying I'd run off the road.Which wasn't really helping of course.

After my first two driving lessons in a manual car, my instructor advised me to learn to drive automatic instead, which I did. It wouldn't be another 12 years after getting my licence that I actually learned to drive a manual. One Sunday night at around 8 I had to go pick up my then partner from the airport, but my derelict old Datsun had died. I had the choice of either calling her dad to pick her up or attempting to drive her car and, given that our house was only a 10 minute drive to the airport, I opted for the latter. Aside from stalling a couple of times - and cruising down Tullamarine Freeway not actually knowing that the car had a 5th gear - I was fine. In Victoria you can legally drive a manual after holding an automatic licence for more than 10 years so I bought the Laser three months later.

What sort of Datsun is it, Neptune? We used to own a Datsun 200B, though it's just been put off the road. I love driving fast, except none of the cars I've driven go faster than 160km. Don't want to get caught speeding the work cars, so I don't go more than 10km over the limit. They would be nice, though. Work just got one of the new Mitsubishi 380's.
When we were kids, we'd be allowed to sit on our parent's laps and steer the car while they worked the pedals. We had a hack car that we'd drive around the farm, so we all learnt to drive pretty young. It's pretty natural to be anxious when you're on your L's and your parents are instructing you. They can be pretty bad instructors, heh. It gets easier with practice, guys.

1980 Sunny. Finally put out to pasture in 2001 when the brakes went M2M for the second time in 12 months. Being an auto I couldn't even gear down to get it home, I had to use the handbrake. I didn't realize until I learned to drive manual just how gutless an auto Datsun is!!

Growing up in the suburbs, my parents were not quite so liberal in allowing us kids to be involved in the driving. When I was a kid my Mum would let me change the auto transmission on the 1978 Toyota Crown...but that arrangement came to an abrupt end after I inadvertently shoved it into park while she was doing about 30. I even managed to do that in my first car - only this time doing 70 down Canterbury Road with 2 passengers Christ knows how that happened!!

Wow, from a flick through this thread, it sounds like the majority of you have at least mastered driving, well enough to get your licences. I took four driving tests and failed the lot, then I gave up because of the sheer cost of all the lessons and tests, and because public transport is particularly good in my area and gets me absolutely anywhere I want to go. Actually, there's absolutely no need for me to be able to drive.

That said, I just couldn't get my head around driving. It really was too complicated for me, maybe because of my motor or co-ordination skills, I don't know. One serious or dangerous fault in a test means an automatic fail, well I had at least 2 serious/dangerous faults in all of my tests. In one of them, I seem to recall I had at least five.

I not only love driving , and fast, I've managed to make a carrer and hobby out of it. I race a Super Comp dragster that does 175 MPH and I build Top Fuel Funny cars that do 330 plus!!

Say when I get the rust off my Taurus, wanna build me a fast 3.0 Vulcan engine?

Yeah, .....just get ready for sticker shock. $7000 block $8000 heads $2800 crank $1200 rods $1500 pistons $15,000 blower etc etc etc..

Im scared of driving. Im afraid im going to make a mistake, or the car is going to break or do something its not supposed to ( even tho it is a machine, i know). I get really flustered driving manual cos i make heaps of errors with the clutch and brake and get confused. I dont like driving much as you can probably tell. My parents want me to learn, but it makes me so nervous!

With the road network up there in Sydney, I don't blame you. I've been driving for 16 years and that's gotta be the hardest place in Australia.