Diary

So today was the 48th hour of driving a car, we didn’t do anything new one emergency stop at the end after being chased round by a 4x4 for a bit, should have guessed that was going to happen after Kev had said he wanted me to do an emergency stop. Trying to perfect manoeuvres on difficult roads (read steep), was quite interesting trying to do a three point turn on a large hill. One thing that is slightly concerning me is reversing into parking spaces in supermarkets and the such. I am not sure why I would want to reverse into a parking space when I could just go in forwards and then put the shopping in the boot, it just seems like something that might be useful at some point. ...

Emergency Stops… …DON’T LIKE My head is buzzing after doing my first four emergency stops, it isn’t the emergency stops that I don’t like it is being in charge of a car after doing one, also having your mate shout “STOP” in your left ear, has a somewhat negative Pavlovian conditioning effect on the enjoyment of driving. So as with my earlier posts I am going to try and write down the procedure for doing an emergency stop, as with previous posts this is my memory of what to do, not official. Please take advise of a qualified driving instructor (like Kev) before trying this. ...

Today was another chance to go through my driver record, Kev got to tick off a few more of the boxes which is always a nice feeling. I am definitely suffering from a case of diminishing returns when it comes to driving, Kev and I had a discussion at the end of the lesson about trying to get more polish on my driving rather than learning any new skills. My driver record now looks like this: ...

Today was quite a lot of driving around and a couple of manoeuve, based upon the deficiency in my driving last week. The majority of it went well, both turning round in the road and reverse parking worked well, it helped me greatly to look back over my notes and refresh my memory. The other major thing we worked on was gear changes approaching junctions, particularly my lack of them! I have a tendency to forget to change gear and try and do roundabouts at 15mph in 4th gear or something equally daft. We decided that this was because I am pre-occupied with understanding the situation, and thus I forget to go through all of the essential steps when approaching a junction. ...

Disclosure: This page contains Amazon Affiliate links; as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Further information can be found in my disclaimer and privacy policy. So today was a mock test, one of several before I take my actual test. We drove down to the test center in Brighton Marina where Kev explained the test to me, how majors and minors worked and what would score as what. I still haven’t done emergency stops so we could not cover that, other than that it seemed pretty much as I had read and expected. ...

So, Kev sprung a surprise on me today… a silver car, not just a silver car but a Renault. More or less the same thing I guess, well all the foot pedals were in the right place if somewhat sticky (not good). And most of the controls make sense. The lesson itself went much the same as the past three lessons, having issues with my feet but getting my way through it. Moving off wasn’t perfect either, stalled more often than I would of liked and stuck around at junctions longer than I should have. ...

I had another ‘funny feet’ day today, not as bad as two lessons ago however. I was being a little hasty trying to move off - this is part of becoming more confident we think, I am no longer able to crawl away without any gas on the flat as I am bringing the clutch up much faster. This means I have to adjust my technique sligtly by putting on the gas and then bringing the clutch up, this is often coupled with taking the hand brake off. It is a lot to think about at once, but I picked it up well. ...

Today was another funny driving lesson my feet weren’t quite right, and I kept doing silly things made a bit of a mess of turning round in the road and didn’t get reversing round a corner quite right. One of the things I was doing particularly wrong was putting the clutch down while breaking, for some reason I have it stuck in my head that clutch goes down when slowing down, rather than just before I come to a stop. Kev got me too take my foot of clutch pedal when driving and rest it on the side (which has done wonders for my ankles) it also delays me putting the clutch down. ...

So, today went much better than last week. We did quite a nice loop of the area I am contemplating taking a GPS with me next time and leaving it logging on the back seat so that I actually know where I have actually been. Maybe I will do that when I have passed my test, could be a little distracting if it started beeping at me. I got two major things from my lesson today; first being that after last week driving isn’t that bad after all, the second is that speed limit signs should be seen on both sides of the road like a gate. ...

Grrr… argh… that didn’t go so well had massive problems with my feet today stalled on hill starts wanted to accelerate round corners, people beeping at me - if you are in the 0.01% of people that beep at learner drivers please try to remember it makes it worse! - Kev went through strategies for keeping moving on minor to major junctions. I can’t think of a way to draw it as a picture but basically it is as follows: ...