DRIVING

I'm waiting for those machines you just programme and sit back to become cheap enough. I'll have one of those.

I'm learning Automatic and I have found that a lot more easier to digest and not be overwhelmed compared to when I was learning on manual. 

Might depend how ASC affects your co-ordination.

I'm a pretty independent soul and wanted to drive badly in my youth. In my third attempt some fool of a driving instructor even gave me a licence. Thereafter, I was forever scraping my dad's car against objects which just refused to be where I thought they were. But see, I'm also one of those who can't hit a ball with a bat because the ball is never where I think it is. I now haven't driven in nearly 30 years. I keep the licence for ID purposes only.

Then again, I have a friend with Asperger's who drives just fine. He owned a lovely MG, actually. He's also good at sport, so I suppose his co-ordination isn't affected at all.

So, I guess the answer is how does ASC affect your co-ordination? If not, go right ahead. It will give you independence. If so, you might find it tricky. In the end, you won't know till you try. Book a couple of lessons and see how it goes. The instructor's duel controls should mean you can't get into any trouble.

My son likes driving, it took 2 goes to pass test, and he is still a very cautious driver.

If you follow the rules on the road, and assume that other drivers won't follow the rules, you should be OK. 

Give it a try but find an instructor you like and who can explain things clearly for you. Do loads of practice.

Everyone is different so you could give it a try.

The only time I really shouted at my child was to demand silence during certain traffic manoeuvers like traffic islands which demand my full attention. She, like me as a child, had full on ADHD so I had to be firm and loud to get her attention quickly enough, as the road conditions will not wait.

I find that my brains "performance" is somewhat variable, some days I really enjoy having the radio on, or having a chatty passenger, but some days I desperately need to "focus".

And I'm sorry "untoward" but I sometimes am a person who forgets to indicate, and I have no idea why that is.. But unlike many people I do usually remember to lean forwards towards the mirror when making a lane change to cover the blind spot, and that has saved my bacon a couple of times on the motorway I can tell you...

After I passed my test I love driving too - by myself in my own car. It's a kind of meditative activity similar to walking. Once your brain is able to handle walking/driving you are then free to just get lost in your own thoughts or switch your brain off or enjoy the scenery.

It does annoy me how most people don't follow the rules though, especially around indicating. It seems to me that at about 60% of people do not bother to indicate, which is crazy. Are these people deciding at some point to just not do it any more? Or is it laziness? It's not exactly a difficult thing, it should be automatic.

But it seems to me that most people in the world are very bad at most things they do and the average intelligence is quite low and half of people are below average. Really, a lot of people shouldn't even be in charge of a dangerous vehicle when they are so stupid.

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.

Sorry to hear this, Desmond79 :( 

I found lessons not too bad, the instructor has foot controls and can stop things getting too dangerous. I passed the test first time, the test was a bit stressful. I then drove for decades. For a while I drove a 200 mile each way trip every fortnight. Then my employer doubled the parking charges and I worked out that a weekly bus ticket was cheaper than parking, petrol and running a car. After stopping my daily commute drive, I soon lost confidence, made worse by seemingly all the local major junctions becoming ridiculously complicated and frankly, illogically laid out. As a result, I now drive once a year to the local garden centre to pick up a Christmas tree. The rest of the time my wife has the car and drives me.

When I did my test there was no mandatory training, and they made you go round a square circuit which the instructor walked around watching you from a distance.

You could also hop onto a Yamaha RD250 at the age of 17 with no training whatsoever!

The resultant carnage amongst my peers is why you have all that CBT stuff now... 

I started with motorcycles in the seventies. Put in three years of falling off and riding like a loon, until I decided to take my test so I could carry a pillion legally.

6 years later, my Evil Stepmother for reasons I never quite understood, bought me 13 driving lessons which I managed to convert into a driving licence through "cheating" on my first attempt at a test. (the road had been scraped by one of those machines and it was slightly damp, so I drove the whole thing really slowly to give myself more thinking time, and when the examiner asked why I was going so slowly claimed I was "allowing for the road conditions"...) I also made damn sure he could see me checking all my mirrors regularly by moving my head not just my eyes.  

I found the initial hours pretty terrifying and initially hated my instructor, in fact on one day, he was being so annoyingly demanding that I got out of the car and made HIM drive it back to the test centre, so he toned it down a bit after that. At the end of the day the instructor is only there to balance the weight of the car and issue information and instructions YOU have to drive the car, and if you are doing it right you haven't got the capacity to worry about him "looking at you". IF that is a real problem for you, I guess you can always ask him to put his seat back a bit, so he isn't always in your peripheral vision.   

On a side note, I only ever found one flying instructor that I liked too, come to think about it. Well, 2 actually but the second one tried to kill me, by pulling the circuit breaker on my flaps when I wasn't looking then as I was trying to figure out why my flaps were inop, requested I convert the landing to a flapless approach, which was O.K., but what was NOT O.K. was when he pushed the C.B. back in on the climb out when I was about 100 feet over the bungalow off the end of our runway causing my flaps to suddenly deploy at the worst possible time! Fortunately I am a quick thinker when my life is in jeopardy and I realised that when the flaps had initially failed to deploy I had not returned the switch to "up", so we  both got to survive the experience. I often wonder if he ever did it again... But that's flying, which is considerably more difficult to learn than driving, and far less forgiving of mistakes.

I hated car driving for many years, much preferring the motorcycles until I got to drive in my job. (58,000 miles in one year!) and I came to realise that I had an edge over pretty much everyone else on the road, which I still appear to have to this day. I found that I was simply more "competent", with faster reactions, and better anticipation of road conditions than most of my fellow road users, which to be honest, makes the experience far less unpleasant. I put that down to the previous motorcycling experience. I'm usually the "designated driver" on long trips, despite my penchant for going as fast as the conditions will allow, with a variety of people, which suits me fine, because I really don't enjoy many other peoples driving. If things get gnarly in a vehicle, you want a driver who will keep thinking and find the best way to avoid or minimise the danger, without freezing in fear, and I do have those qualities. 

I also saw snow and ice as an interesting challenge, and when given the opportunity would go practice sliding about in an empty car park, because I did not want to be forced to learn those skills on the road surrounded by other road users, when the weather turns unexpectedly. (and also it's quite a bit of fun when you get the hang of it). What you do in the first few milliseconds of a skid affects the outcome hugely, and you are far more likely to get it right if you've practiced a bit beforehand. A policeman once told me during a traffic stop, that if you MUST speed down a dual carriage way, (particularly at night or poor visibilty) if the conditions allow it, drive straight down the centre line between the carriage-ways, so that if anything runs out in front of you from either side, you get more time to react. (Now that's the sort of policing I appreciate) An ex fireman friend also taught me that if you have to swerve to avoid an obstacle, dab the brakes first to shift the weight onto the front wheels, giving you extra traction and reducing (not eliminating) the chances of a skid developing then take them off as the turn develops. I suspect that works much better on a fully loaded fire engine than the family car, but the principle is sound enough, and I realised I'd been doing it for years due to the carpark skidding practice sessions. A guilt inspiring incident for me was that when a customer was following me one day, in the snow as I made a hard right turn onto the main road, he followed me at my pace, but halfway through the turn ended up sliding into a parked car, when I had had no trouble. I felt guilt because just as I made the turn I remembered that normies don't ever practice these things and that I should have made allowances, and just as I glanced behind to see if he was making the turn OK, I saw him bin his nice car into the side of the parked car.. 

As Dirty Harry would say, "A mans gotta know his limitations". That certainly applies to driving, and you do well to find your limitations under controlled conditions adn when you choose. 

In the forty or so years I've been driving I've only had two "my fault" accidents both in the first ten years, I've also had four people run into the back of me when I've been stopped at the lights or for a junction (the one that ruined my back was when some inattentive git drove into me whilst I was on a huge ex-police bike waiting for the lights to change colour) but that's other drivers for you... 

This is a bit of a "boasty" post, but it's less about me stroking my ego, and more about me trying to say that Autism does not disqualify you from driving, and I believe does not seem to make it particularly difficult to be above average at doing it. I suspect that the well known Autistic trait of wanting to really "master your subject" gives us a considerable advantage over normie drivers, once we get past our test and really start to learn how to drive..

Although the "impulse control" issues that affects those of us on the ADD end of the spectrum have given me a fair bit of trouble in the early years, I found a useful "workaround" which completely eliminates that particular hazard for me, but which unfortunately I cannot share for legal reasons, although it's been keeping me safe and out of trouble for about 30 years now..  

When my Daughter failed her test for the third time, I took her out for a few lessons, realised that she had good aptitude but was overly hesitant. It was a simple matter to teach her a couple of tricks for navigating islands, like "use the car on your right as a shield, and providing you go when he does, if there's an accident, he will absorb most of the impact".

And the golden rule I learned from my one big accident, "If you spot the motorway exit that you want a little bit to late to make the manoever at a comfortable pace, Just let it go past, rather than ending up ripping the front wheel off your 7000 mile old company car like I did in the late eighties... Then when she was displaying, full confidence and it was just her nerves and hesitancy that was letting her down, whenever we had got to a patch of road where it was not too demanding and I judged it safe I just annoyed the crap out of her with my unique brand of stupidity, so she simply forgot to be nervous about the driving and simply got on with it whilst complaining about my antics.. After a few hours of that tomfoolery she realised that she could actually drive without having to concentrate savagely 100% of the time, and then went and passed her test with no further problems.

Which reminds me, It's about time I took her out for an assessment now she has had a few of years of further practice. 

I love driving. I passed back in 1990. I remember getting really annoyed because I couldn’t get my instructor to break down hill starts for me in a way I could interpret what I needed to do.

I hate people talking to me when I drive because I love being immersed in the experience. I love the different rules (e.g. what th

I love driving. I passed back in 1990. I remember getting really annoyed because I couldn’t get my instructor to break down hill starts for me in a way I could interpret what I needed to do.

I hate people talking to me when I drive because I love being immersed in the experience. I love the different rules (e.g. what the different road markings mean) and how to maximise my gear changes (when I drive manual cars). I get really irritated by road users who don’t follow the rules, can’t indicate properly on a roundabout and can’t judge distances precisely enough to estimate when to apply their brakes at precisely the right time to stop exactly where they need to stop.

In fact, I’ve never really admitted out loud to myself but, yes, I am a perfectionist when it comes to driving!!!???  I’m not a perfect driver but I am always striving for perfection and I like the way I drive.

I avoid making right turns wherever possible, not because I’m anxious about them but because waiting for a break in the traffic or for someone to give way is an inefficient use of my time and I’m not very patient with waiting when driving (that might be my ?ADHD)

I love the control, convenience and independence that driving brings you.

I always give learner drivers space so they don’t get stressed as I remember what that feels like many years later. I see it as a duty and imagine the instructor silently thanking me 

Maybe you could use learning the rules as something to hyper focus on rather than your fears about the practical side. It might be that getting lots and lots of contextual information gives you a greater sense of control. I really hope you conquer your fears. It might be that fear of the unknown is making things worse for you and once you have your first lesson that experience will put most of the fears to bed because your mind will have the answers to the questions which it was looking for but had no information on to resolve. Just take it at your own pace 

I could never have the radio on while driving, as I get too engrossed in music.

Yes, Northern Ireland's award-winning and hard-hitting Road Safety ads had an adverse effect on me. Not to mention my Nan's untreated PTSD caused by Dad's death in the Troubles, and accidents she endured while Mum drove her.

Driving stresses me out. However, I'm grateful that I can drive.

The old school friend I go for walks with complemented my driving skills after he followed me from one place we wanted to walk to another; which was held back by a Funeral entourage.

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. 

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.

I hate driving and only took my test because I had to drive for work at the age of 25. If I didnt have to drive at all then I probably wouldn't. I try to avoid any driving outside of work but I don't live local to my mum and siblings so I do drive to them (they don't drive). 

was easy. learned to drive a bike and they have more vigorous tests than what cars do so you actually are made sure you can actually drive safely on the road before they even allow you to have any sort of test. although in that case you then get ripped off by people saying your not good enough to pass your CBT just so they can keep bringing you in to farm money off you for lessons, when infact i was actually good enough to not only pass CBT but good enough to pass any of the most advanced driving tests in the world with how much they ripped me off and kept lying to me about not being ready so they can get more money from me lol

Oh, and just something funny, I ended up doing the theory test 3 times!! The first time, I passed but I didn't take my practical test soon enough so it expired. The second time, there was a new part to it and it involved clicking a mouse every time you saw a hazard... well I went a bit overboard (sensory stuff, perhaps? I don't know!) and failed it! Third time lucky! :)