DRIVING

I found it very easy to learn to drive. I'm good at learning new skills and tend to do things better than other people. The only thing that was difficult and unpleasant for me was the driving instructor trying to make small talk! It made me dread having lessons and even cancelled them and put off learning for years because of that. The actual skill of controlling a car or learning the Highway Code was trivially easy.

Even the examiner tried to make small talk with me! I was already very nervous. Why can't we just drive in silence.

My driving instructor told me that talking whilst driving is part of the learning experience, because it is necessary to drive whilst coping with distractions. 

Yes I think that's probably right. But it's something that comes with practice. Eventually controlling the car and understanding situations on the road gets transferred to the subconscious and taken over by the default mode network, so that you can use your conscious brain at the same time as doing it - and you can even drive places without even remembering doing it.

For me that didn't happen until about a month after I had passed my test. Before then, driving took immense concentration. Talking to people is very cognitively demanding for me so doing it at the same time as driving was difficult.

There were a few times when I made terrible mistakes during my lessons because my instructor was asking me about "what I'm doing a the weekend" and those usual dreaded topics and I almost drove straight into oncoming traffic.

Yes I think that's probably right. But it's something that comes with practice. Eventually controlling the car and understanding situations on the road gets transferred to the subconscious and taken over by the default mode network, so that you can use your conscious brain at the same time as doing it - and you can even drive places without even remembering doing it.

For me that didn't happen until about a month after I had passed my test. Before then, driving took immense concentration. Talking to people is very cognitively demanding for me so doing it at the same time as driving was difficult.

There were a few times when I made terrible mistakes during my lessons because my instructor was asking me about "what I'm doing a the weekend" and those usual dreaded topics and I almost drove straight into oncoming traffic.