Published on 12, July, 2020
It took me many years to learn to drive and only eventually passed my test in an automatic car in my 40s.
Today I've just come home from driving to Chichester and the other drivers drove me a bit mad.
Motorbikes cutting me up, people doing 20 miles an hour in a 60 zone, me getting out of the way of 2 ambulances and no-one letting me back out etc etc etc.
I seem to like driving less and less and am more inclined to stay at home than I ever was.
There is just so much going on around you to be aware of, especially in cities (with pedestrians too).
So, 2 questions.
1. Is my difficulty with learning in a manual car, which I took at the time to be poor co-ordination, but I wasn't aware of my autism, an autistic thing?
2. Does anyone else find driving difficult (and, again, is it an autistic thing)?
I'm thirty-nine and I can't drive. I have never even had a lesson. I had various reasons why not, but eventually I realised it was anxious avoidance. I'm scared of operating such a dangerous piece of machinery, especially as I'm not always well coordinated even with things like shopping trolleys, and I'm bad at judging the speed and distance of traffic when crossing the road.
However, my wife doesn't drive either. She has had lessons and done badly (she is not diagnosed autistic, but has a lot of symptoms). She feels that I ought to at least take a few lessons to see how I cope as it would be useful if one of us could drive. This is reasonable, especially as she is doing bigger things for me (moving from the US to the UK for one thing), but I am nervous.