Autism and Driving

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When you learn to drive, the driving school usually doesnt care about mental disability like any type of autism, high functioning or low functioning, and so on. If you had only one hand or one leg thats a different story of course, but as long as you're mentally stable they dont really care. Of course if you are a danger to others or yourself thats a big problem, but as long as its just social related difficulties related to a type of autism, of any type, thats not a big enough problem to not allow you to drive, or learn to drive. The question is how did your autism impact, if at all, your driving ability or what effect, if at all, did it have. For me, I drive normally like any other normal person. But for you, it might be different. So the question is what effect if at all could autism have on driving, or would you say it has no effect most of the time.

I got my licence just before I turned 18.
I didn't know I was autistic or that I had ADHD.

I don't know what effect it had on me, because it's the only way I've ever driven.
I never drove as a Neurotypical person.

I'm a very good driver.

It seems that lots of people with autism drive, so I don't think autism typically has an impact on driving, depending on where they are on the spectrum of course.

driving is my passion

i drive buses for a living and i love it

I got my first American driver's license at 16.  I drove military vehicles with 30 minutes of training in my mid-thirties.  I got my first foreign driver's license at age 65.  At no time did anyone question my mental capacity for driving.

I don't drive because I find it too difficult, unless there is very little other traffic. I can't pay attention to two or more moving things at once, which you have to do if you want to change lanes or make a left turn.

I used to live in a sleepy, quiet city and I had a car I drove nearly every day for about three years. There wasn't a lot of traffic and the roads were wide and easily visible. I still found it difficult and would stick to my regular routes. If a UPS truck was blocking my lane, rather than go around it I would just turn right. Sometimes rather than making a left turn, I would make three right turns. I also didn't drive on the freeway at all.

So it was not for lack of trying. I never got past the beginner-driver stage.

I don't know if that's due to autism, but I have been told that it is by a psychologist, for what that's worth.

Dunno about autism, but people with ADHD tend to be worse drivers on average. This is why I'm nervous about learning to drive. Still doing it though.

It took me ages to develop my driving skills, but eventually I got it figured out.

Someday I'd like to enter the Tall Pines Rally in Bancroft, although that might be a few years away.

I passed my driving test first time when I was 18. I had no inkling of my autism (just put it down to quirky traits).

But anyway... driving... I hated it. I drove for a year and found it very overwhelming. I then did not own a car anymore until I was 26 and got my first job, which required me to get to and from work (and also to drive a company van - I was a postman). I hated it so much that I had two minor accidents based on my insecurities and lack of confidence, but these days I rather enjoy driving EXCEPT in ridiculously complex traffic systems or towns that I have not been to before.

Before I was diagnosed I thought I was affected by decades of working with computers...seeing everything in binary.

Stopped or speed limit. Some of my passengers would've preferred a more gradual change from one to the other.

Amber/red lights mean stop. Except most people seem to consider it a recommendation with a fuzzy boundary. I've gotten better about not being so conscientious about that but rather more like other drivers. I've learned, through experience, it really complicates the day when I am conscientious and the car behind me assumed I wouldn't be.

I can drive, I used to drive a lot up and down the country but I hate driving so during the pandemic I just let it slide. I do the minimum of driving now but try to keep up with it in case there is a disaster and I need to drive somewhere.

I don't know how to drive. The reason for not learning are twofold. There is a lot of visual.and audio stimuli happening in the car that I find very overwhelming and distracting. Witnessing someone being hit by a car and being significantly injured by it reduced my interest in driving considerably.

Fortunately I live in an area very friendly to people who do not drive.

I can't be a passenger because of the visual / auditory stimuli. There's nothing to do but notice everything and become overwhelmed. I hate when other people drive and they want to talk, or they have a radio going with weather and news and traffic reports. I don't like when the driver moves around or fidgets because I have visual misophonia. I don't even like sitting beside people (in a car or not). I'd rather be face to face as awful as that is too, but side by side is weird to me. If I have to be in a car I want to be the driver, blast my music, and not talk to anyone or make conversation. I know I'm in control and I won't crash, which is more than I can say for others driving.

Most of the time if I'm a passenger for a long car ride, by the time I get out of the car I'm so overwhelmed my legs don't function and I face plant on the ground, sometimes in tears.

The DVLC in the UK assumes that if you can pass a driving test, you can drive, and ASD as such is no bar to being allowed to drive.

In practice, I've noticed a few things where it's possible that ASD has given me driving problems. My driving instructors certainly weren't ASD-aware (neither was I at the time), and that might have caused a few misunderstandings.

I remember that I didn't feel confident about negotiating a right turn through a busy junction with traffic lights (we drive on the left in the UK, so a right turn presents the same challenges as a left turn does in the USA). I asked my instructor to take me through such a junction so that I could reproduce the expected problem. He did so, but as luck would have it I got through it perfectly every time. There was just some particular set of conditions I sensed I wouldn't be able to handle, that didn't happen, and I couldn't explain it at the time, but I still didn't feel quite right about that junction. Then I made a royal mess of going through that junction on my first test.

These days I'm more able to articulate the details of what went wrong. What had been bothering me was that I didn't know what to do in the event that the lights changed on me while I was in the junction and still blocked from making the turn by the oncoming cars. Other cars from the side would then get the green light and I'd be in their way. On my test, when the lights changed on me I panicked and turned into the path of an oncoming car in order to get out of the way. What I hadn't realised was that the stream of oncoming cars would very soon end because they'd get a red light that would stop any more of them from bothering me, so all I'd needed to do was wait for the last car or two to go by and I'd have been free to make my turn with enough time before the cars from the sides were allowed to start moving towards me. Even now it takes me quite a bit of thought to articulate all that. At the time, I couldn't fully picture the situation and I just felt confused when I tried. I suppose ASD had something to do with the problem.

Similarly, when I was re-learning to drive recently after a long gap, I got stuck in the wrong lane. Another driver signalled to let me into "his" lane in front of him, but I didn't have time to figure out what he meant, and wasn't confident that I could judge car distances and speeds adequately through the mirrors, so I stayed put. So I was soon getting honked at. I can't remember how I got out of that mess. I don't understand why I can't anticipate the problems I get into and thus get help in safely figuring out that kind of thing in advance so that I don't get into danger.

I hate those situations where I have to wait at a busy T-junction to turn onto the far side of a main road. Cars build up behind me and I feel under pressure to make my move, but there doesn't seem to be a safe gap for a rather long time.

I'm good at sticking firmly to the rules, but apparently real driving is about knowing when to bend the rules, and about expecting other road users to do the same.

As for roundabouts, I wish I could just avoid them. It seems impossible to safely drive round a crowded one, changing lanes in front of other cars while travelling in a circle. In practice everybody is going at the same speed and there's no overtaking. Well, I know that, but can I trust them to know it? My instinct says, why change lanes anyway? Why not just keep to the outer lane all the time? But I suppose if I do that then I'm in the wrong, for some reason.

I guess I just need more practice. But lessons are expensive and they seem very inefficient. If I only have one per week, I forget a lot of what I learned during the gap. And even if I get an unusually good instructor who has dual controls, with a car clearly marked as having a learner driver to warn other road users, I don't feel safe trying to do things I don't already know how to do. It feels as though learning to drive is an impossibly expensive, hard, and dangerous thing to do. Yet people do it all the time.

I guess one problem I have is that a verbal conversation isn't enough for me to learn what I need to learn. I need to see it written down, preferably with diagrams and moving pictures to illustrate the issues. I need to take my time and study it in depth. Beyond that, I don't know how much the problems I've mentioned here are related to ASD. All I can do is describe the difficulties I get when I drive. Draw your own conclusions.