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Driving Aspies/Others on Spectrum

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Surreal
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08 Jun 2010, 10:12 am

People often think I learned to drive at the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving! I am often described as A BAT OUTTA HELL!

They say I peel off the parking lot from work on TWO WHEELS many days, and people actually CLEAR A PATH when they see me coming.

that said, I live in a city where people tend to drive slower - like 45 MPH in the LEFT LANE on the highway :roll: I tend to fit in with the driving in Chicago better - although I'm SLOWER than many of THEM even!

Still, I'm a SAFE driver as I tend NOT to WEAVE IN AND OUT OF TRAFFIC and prefer to stay in my lane. I do, however, get extremely agitated with poke-alongs in the left lane! But that's not an Aspie trait or anything like that.



serenity
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08 Jun 2010, 10:17 am

Swordfish210 wrote:
serenity wrote:
I can, and do drive. I don't like it, but I have no choice, because I live in a rural area. I won't drive in heavy traffic areas, though. My mind gets overloaded, and it's too difficult for me. I also have an extreme tendency to get lost. Not in a normal way of getting lost, like my brain doesn't record any visual information about where I've been unless it's something that I see everyday kind of lost. You could drive me somewhere that I've been to hundreds of times before expecting me drive myself home, and 9 times of 10 I couldn't do it. My husband has gotten me GPS so that has helped with that issue. I'm still extremely limited to where I can safely go due to getting visually overstimulated.


I hate GPS, my driving instructor tried it on me, but I'm not that good in assessing distance, so when I pass a sideroad, the thing says 'go left' and I just look to the left and thing 'damn, that's my turn'.


I'm also very bad with distances, but at least I know that I was supposed to make a left, and I can turn around, and do so, as opposed to me missing my turn altogether as I drive along down the road unaware.



serenity
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08 Jun 2010, 10:27 am

Sparrowrose wrote:
serenity wrote:
You could drive me somewhere that I've been to hundreds of times before expecting me drive myself home, and 9 times of 10 I couldn't do it. My husband has gotten me GPS so that has helped with that issue.


I'm fortunate to live in a town ringed by mountains so when I get lost, I aim for the nearest mountain and keep driving in that general direction until I get there. Once I drive a little way up the mountain, I can look back and see the big hill by the university with four Grecian columns on top of it. That's my landmark because I live two blocks from it and know that area. I then drive straight toward the columns as much as possible until I get to familiar territory.

I need those kinds of landmarks because I'm not one of those autistics who always knows where North is and I can't always tell by the sun, either. When I lived in Chicago, people used to get a kick out of asking me "where's the lake?" because no matter where we were, I'd confidently point toward the lake and everyone would giggle because I was, once again, pointing in the opposite direction. I required a map to get around Chicago and I also had to go at least one block before I could figure out which way to hold the map because I needed two points of reference to locate myself. If I just started from the intersection I was at, there was a 50% chance I'd assume the wrong direction on the map relative to where I was in real space.

Where I live now is MUCH smaller (I can bicycle from one side of town to the other in about an hour) and I just look things up on Mapquest before I go someplace new. But if I'm going to regular places, I'm okay because I can always head for a mountain, find my way back home, and then start out again. (Which I sometimes need to do because even though I know how to get from home to the post office and from home to the grocery, I can easily get lost if I try to go to the post office and then the grocery without going home in between.)


I have never been able to tell south, north ect... I have absolutely no idea how other people do that. It's as if I was literally born without that software being installed into my brain like everyone else. I just get an error box when I try to think about it. lol

I also need landmarks to navigate. That's why I will not drive anywhere at night. I feel like I'm half blind, because I can't see my landmarks to see where I'm going.

If I'm going somewhere new, I'll get a map from mapquest, then double check it with my husband. Sometimes, it's not the most efficient way to get to where I'm going, or else it's taking me through a lot of traffic, and I need the route with the least amount of traffic, and exits, if possible. I'll also ask him what landmarks will be present so that I know if I'm going in the right direction. It takes me a longggg time to prepare for a drive to somewhere new. My husband is the exact opposite, and never forgets where he has been, and has a virtual running map in his head at all times.



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08 Jun 2010, 12:53 pm

One of my strongest points is good sense of direction. I have a virtual map of California (and of the major highways in the USA) in my head. You can drop me blindfolded anywhere in Los Angeles County, and I'll not only tell you the best way to get anywhere, but what time of day is better for traffic on certain routes. All I need to do is see the sun, and read two consecutive addresses on buildings. One trip from anywhere to anywhere in the USA, and I can repeat it with no help. Even when I drove back to Dallas from Los Angeles alone earlier this year, I arrived there tired, and with a MISTAKE on the directions for the particular route I was taking. I was accidentally passed the interchange that I wanted downtown to go up to North Dallas, and a bell went off in my head that something wasn't right. I got off the highway at a strange exit, and somehow just knew which way to go on surface streets to find my way back to the North Tollway. Just by knowing where I must have been; a little east and too far south. No problem.

Although fortunately I haven't had to, I believe I could get out of being lost on a hike, etc. Most people stay lost in deserts and mountains because they wind up going in a circle. I can always tell if I'm going in a circle, and if I'm going in a general single direction.

Charles



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08 Jun 2010, 7:22 pm

The only place I've ever been able to tell directions reliably (to the point of being one of those annoying people who uses the cardinal directions) is the city where I live now, and have for many years. It's a very sensible city--either you're moving on a grid, or you're going around the city in a ring. That's it...not much to it. ;)



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08 Jun 2010, 8:01 pm

Surreal wrote:
People often think I learned to drive at the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving! I am often described as A BAT OUTTA HELL!

They say I peel off the parking lot from work on TWO WHEELS many days, and people actually CLEAR A PATH when they see me coming.

that said, I live in a city where people tend to drive slower - like 45 MPH in the LEFT LANE on the highway :roll: I tend to fit in with the driving in Chicago better - although I'm SLOWER than many of THEM even!

Still, I'm a SAFE driver as I tend NOT to WEAVE IN AND OUT OF TRAFFIC and prefer to stay in my lane. I do, however, get extremely agitated with poke-alongs in the left lane! But that's not an Aspie trait or anything like that.


Did you mean to say that you're *faster* than drivers in Chicago? Because that would really concern me. When I lived in Chicago, in non-rush hour traffic I had to drive over 80 mph just to be safely in the flow of traffic on the tollways! (Because that's what everyone else was doing and it's just as dangerous to try to drive 30 mph slower than everyone else than to try to drive 30 mph faster than everybody else.) I really wouldn't want to drive near someone who thought that doing 80 mph on the tollway was too slow, no matter how well they controlled their car.

Driving is not just about being in control of your own vehicle; it is about being predictable to the drivers around you. When I look and see that the way is clear and begin to move through an intersection, I'm trusting that other drivers are obeying the speed limit as well and someone isn't going to come barrelling like a bat out of hell, smashing in to me because they were going so fast the intersection became unsafe because no one could possibly see far enough to predict the oncoming projectile that is their car.


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08 Jun 2010, 9:38 pm

I doubt I ever will.

Too much stuff to focus on when driving, and you can't control how others drive; I get very, very annoyed when people "break" the rules.

Being in a couple of serious accidents that weren't the fault of the person I was with doesn't help either.