Published on 12, July, 2020
I'm trying to learn to drive at the moment. I've had 30 hours of lessons and it's mostly going fine, but I'm really struggling to cope with the sensations of the car/ road. I can manage most of it, usually, but I really struggle with the feeling of changing gear, which is making hill starts particularly really difficult because I don't like making the engine rev because it's loud and feels horrible. And to make it worse my instructor has just got a new car and it's it's really loud.
Does anyone have any experience of learning to drive and overcoming the sensory stuff that I'm finding quite overwhelming?
I learnt on a manual but have got to say that, once I started driving on my own I still found it really quite challenging - too much happening at once! The assumption that i would grow accustomed to it turned out not to be true in my case. Or leastways any desensitisation process took so long as to be useless in any meaningful way.
Eventually what made the difference was to switch to an automatic. For all the additional stress and trouble shifting between gears caused me, I'd say it wasn't worth persisting and I wish i'd learnt on an automatic. Plus automatics have a bit of forward creep that is very handy on hill starts too. Some might feel it's a cop out (I sometimes have the feeling we live in a nation of Jeremy Clarksons) but I'd recommend switching to an instructor with an automatic. Possibly also an instructor who welcomes "nervous drivers". I honestly wish i'd been more upfront about my problems much earlier on as it would have saved a lot of angsting.