Advanced Driving Hub

Hi All. Just a note to introduce myself and explain how I'd appreciate help from other Members.

Judging by the number of Highway Code editions that have been published since its institution around 1930, driving technique has always been in a state of evolutionary flux. When I passed the test for my Driving Licence in the late 1950s, examiners were obsessed with ensuring that the applicant was able to look right, left and right again at every junction and apply the handbrake should another vehicle appear within sight. Further on/off hand-braking, out of gearing, and neck-turning was essential to pass until the road was empty of all traffic.

Some years later, when my wife learnt to drive, I was horrified when she glanced to her right at a "T" junction and shot straight into a left turn. This she assured me was how her instructor had taught her and indeed, he had. Driving method had moved on from concentrating upon ultra caution into ensuring drivers made efficient progress on the road, and I had to rethink my whole motoring technique.

When I took my Advanced Test in the early 1970s, I believed then that Roadcraft and advanced driving were solely the province of Police Driving Schools and Class 1 Police Advanced Drivers, with the possible exception of conscientious Jaguar and other posh fast car owners, certainly not Micra drivers like myself. Then one day I woke up to the realisation that there were now more fast cars on the road than slow ones and that speed (often without safety) was becoming the norm. So I returned to the drawing board, this time feeling free to drive like the new majority but using my earlier defensive style.

So, if I post with a question on apparently "trending" new techniques, I would greatly appreciate help from those Members more in touch with the latest thinking.

Cheers, Olden Bill.

Hello Bill - welcome to the forum... it sounds as though you have been through several stages in your own development - and of course questions of all types are welcomed here...

look forward to more discussion

Alasdair

Hello!

Welcome Bill.

Welcome Bill. Interesting question you raise. Could be a good subject or a thread of its own rather than in "Introduction"

I’m intrested in your handbreak comment. My first observer in 2006 suggested I should be in Neutral with the hand break on at the front of a queue of traffic turning right on to an A road. This went against what my driving instructor and other IAM members had told me so I changed Observer. Now days I need to put my car in Neutral to get the Auto Start/Stop to work, Although I don’t do it near the front of a Queue of traffic!

During a drive with my group's chief observer, to see if I was ready for the test, use of the handbrake was suggested “whenever a pause becomes a wait.”

If there is an unbroken stream of traffic coming from one, or both, sides you might as well rest your leg muscles by putting the handbrake on and selecting neutral until you can see a gap developing that you might emerge into.

THerald wrote:Now days I need to put my car in Neutral to get the Auto Start/Stop to work,

First thing I do after starting the engine is turn this intrusive witchcraft off.

GTR1400MAN wrote:First thing I do after starting the engine is turn this intrusive witchcraft off.

Seconded!

GTR1400MAN wrote:

THerald wrote:Now days I need to put my car in Neutral to get the Auto Start/Stop to work,

First thing I do after starting the engine is turn this intrusive witchcraft off.

So you carry around expensive heavy hardware and don't use it? I enjoy the silence when it kicks in, and I find ways to start the engine in good time before moving off.