Learning to drive with ASD

I think that finding the right driving instructor is key. I tried to learn to drive when I was 18 and had to quickly stop due to the anxiety. My instructor then was young, chatty, and kept making casual conversation and taking phone calls from other pupils. It was very distracting to say the least!!! I managed about 4 or 5 lessons, then was finished off by a lesson at 5 pm in the winter rush hour traffic, dark, raining, and all the glare from traffic lights and other cars. Fast forward to age 32 and we were moving to a rural area with no public transport. I tried again, this time with an older female instructor. She appeared stressed out, bad tempered, impatient, confused and confusing. I lasted one of two lessons, vilontly shaking and being snapped at,  and then abandoned the rest of the block I had booked with her! The last instructor I tried saved things. He was much older (I was one of his last pupils before retiring), very calm, relaxed, very serious but had the best, driest sense of humour, and made ZERO social casual chit chat. Everything he said throughout our lessons was relevant to driving and observation... he only talked about the logistics of driving, and paid a lot of attention to hazards and avoiding hazards! His focus on emerging hazards and taking preemptive precautions delighted me!!! We got on really well and his teaching style clicked perfectly with my learning style. I loved that everything he said was relevant to the lessons and what was happening outside of the car. It meant that in the lessons, all I had to concentrate on was driving. I still had terrible anxiety and shakes and stomach issues before each lesson but his calmness rubbed off and I was able to focus once we got going. I also had a cold shower before each lesson which sort of helped?! had two one hour lessons a week as he said I'd forget things if we just had one lesson a week, but that a two hourly lesson is too much as the brain stops taking in information after a certain amount of time. And we had every lesson at 10 am , and I also had my test at 10 am, as that was the quietest time on our roads! (It does mean that I still won't drive in rush hour traffic though!) I've been driving for 10 years now, and I drive a manual car and would hate to drive an automatic, as I love the actual process of changing gears etc and find that grounding and calming, and I feel more in control of the car! I still have horrible anxiety about driving, and really only drive to two places which are in opposite directions along the sane straight road, which is the nearest supermarket and my Grandma's house in one direction, and a quiet place where I can for a walk away from traffic in the opposite direction! I am fairly comfortable driving to these two familiar places, but the thought of driving anywhere else, like across a busy town, or round busy roundabouts, or to an unfamiliar place along unfamiliar roads terrifies me, so I don't do it. On the rare occasion I have had to drive somewhere else, like to the hospital, I rehearse in on google street view and then in my mind over and over again, for days beforehand, so it is all planned out in my head when I do it, but the anxiety is so awful!

I think that finding the right driving instructor is key. I tried to learn to drive when I was 18 and had to quickly stop due to the anxiety. My instructor then was young, chatty, and kept making casual conversation and taking phone calls from other pupils. It was very distracting to say the least!!! I managed about 4 or 5 lessons, then was finished off by a lesson at 5 pm in the winter rush hour traffic, dark, raining, and all the glare from traffic lights and other cars. Fast forward to age 32 and we were moving to a rural area with no public transport. I tried again, this time with an older female instructor. She appeared stressed out, bad tempered, impatient, confused and confusing. I lasted one of two lessons, vilontly shaking and being snapped at,  and then abandoned the rest of the block I had booked with her! The last instructor I tried saved things. He was much older (I was one of his last pupils before retiring), very calm, relaxed, very serious but had the best, driest sense of humour, and made ZERO social casual chit chat. Everything he said throughout our lessons was relevant to driving and observation... he only talked about the logistics of driving, and paid a lot of attention to hazards and avoiding hazards! His focus on emerging hazards and taking preemptive precautions delighted me!!! We got on really well and his teaching style clicked perfectly with my learning style. I loved that everything he said was relevant to the lessons and what was happening outside of the car. It meant that in the lessons, all I had to concentrate on was driving. I still had terrible anxiety and shakes and stomach issues before each lesson but his calmness rubbed off and I was able to focus once we got going. I also had a cold shower before each lesson which sort of helped?! had two one hour lessons a week as he said I'd forget things if we just had one lesson a week, but that a two hourly lesson is too much as the brain stops taking in information after a certain amount of time. And we had every lesson at 10 am , and I also had my test at 10 am, as that was the quietest time on our roads! (It does mean that I still won't drive in rush hour traffic though!) I've been driving for 10 years now, and I drive a manual car and would hate to drive an automatic, as I love the actual process of changing gears etc and find that grounding and calming, and I feel more in control of the car! I still have horrible anxiety about driving, and really only drive to two places which are in opposite directions along the sane straight road, which is the nearest supermarket and my Grandma's house in one direction, and a quiet place where I can for a walk away from traffic in the opposite direction! I am fairly comfortable driving to these two familiar places, but the thought of driving anywhere else, like across a busy town, or round busy roundabouts, or to an unfamiliar place along unfamiliar roads terrifies me, so I don't do it. On the rare occasion I have had to drive somewhere else, like to the hospital, I rehearse in on google street view and then in my mind over and over again, for days beforehand, so it is all planned out in my head when I do it, but the anxiety is so awful!

Also, I was utterly wiped out, drained and exhausted after every lesson and they were only one hour long, I think a four hour lesson is a really bad idea!!

Sticking to the same time for every lesson also makes it more part of a routine.

I also spoke out loud in my lessons saying what I was doing, and why, and what I could see etc. I did this in my test too and passed first time with only 2 minor faults (one of which was not stopping in the box when we got back to the test centre, and the other was my tyre touching the kerb slightly when I had to "pull up in a safe place" (which I was aware of and immediately adjusted, also verbalising this as I did so).