The most difficult aspect of Advanced Driving

[jcochrane]

Just out of interest, why do you go out to 'practice' your driving? Surely you should be aiming for your 'best' driving to be your default 'style'.

Imagine all your driving is just daily commuting on motorways and going to the local shops. Would you think of a forum-organised day of driving as anything other than practice? How about if all your normal driving was on motorways and urban roads; would a larger proportion of rural roads on the forum-organised driving days still feel normal? Would the skills you employ be the same?

Not sure I follow you For me it makes no difference if I commute to London, pop down to the shops or on good roads in Wales every drive I try to drive my best and if things don't work out quite right I try to learn from the experience. I can never understand how a practice drive can be separated from any drive, so I would agree with SD on this.

[akirk]

Just out of interest, why do you go out to 'practice' your driving? Surely you should be aiming for your 'best' driving to be your default 'style'.

Imagine all your driving is just daily commuting on motorways and going to the local shops. Would you think of a forum-organised day of driving as anything other than practice? How about if all your normal driving was on motorways and urban roads; would a larger proportion of rural roads on the forum-organised driving days still feel normal? Would the skills you employ be the same?

Not sure I follow you For me it makes no difference if I commute to London, pop down to the shops or on good roads in Wales every drive I try to drive my best and if things don't work out quite right I try to learn from the experience. I can never understand how a practice drive can be separated from any drive, so I would agree with SD on this.

I can see that makes sense - but I suppose for many who have regular driving on only certain types of road it makes sense to do both:
- drive every drive to be your best
- go out additionally to practice other roads...

One thing I have noticed is that I drive the same few short roads a lot locally (work from home), so there is an over-familiarity with those roads - I do therefore consciously try and drive other roads as well

Alasdair

[jont-]

A couple of years ago I was mostly using public transport or cycling to work. I'd go out to practice/drive for fun, because otherwise I wouldn't have been driving at all (and with wales on the doorstep, it would have been rude not to!).

[gannet]

A couple of years ago I was mostly using public transport or cycling to work. I'd go out to practice/drive for fun, because otherwise I wouldn't have been driving at all (and with wales on the doorstep, it would have been rude not to!).

apart from the Wales bit... that's me.

I do however try to drive my best regardless of journey - but it is still tailored to the passenger - mrs gannet likes to take in the scenery a little more that I do...

[akirk]

mrs gannet likes to take in the scenery a little more that I do...

there is always a solution:




Alasdair

[Gareth]

For me the skills don't change - you might not do as much bend assessment, but you've still got to employ whatever system of planning you use. It is all the same - those that only dust off certain skills in the package for particular days are those that I worry about.

It's clear that I sometimes have trouble communicating clearly, so sorry for encouraging you to find a false dichotomy when I meant none. Every time I go out to drive I'm practicing. Each gear change is slagged off if not as good as I want it to be, and so on. In 'normal' driving I don't get to overtake all that much, but I look for opportunities and take them more often than many drivers. I'm hardly ever working on anything in particular, but I've met very many drivers who have been able to identify some aspect or other of their driving that they're "working on", which I take to mean these are areas they're actively pracising, maybe as part of normal driving but often they'll be doing what others think of as recreational driving in order to practise.

Anyway, this forum, and it's predecessor, really aren't aimed at people who have had a significant amount of professional coaching, although certainly encouraging driving enthusiasts in direction. Instead I was imagining people who do very little driving. A number I've met on ADUK driving days have said how they almost never drive on country roads, motorways excepted. For them, attending a perhaps once a year driving day is a chance where they can really get to practice those aspects of their driving that are rarely addressed.

[Horse]

I posted on another board my experiences of an ADUK day (in particular, changing my throttle use and steering input for cornering, after my first day in Jan 2014, with JC & Gareth). This was one reply:

Good grief. Most of the people I know 'just drive', some more scarily than others. Some are generally held to be 'good drivers', and they have all passed basic training, apart from one who got a licence by accident (and I cannot say he is a 'bad driver' because he is a mate). It is encouraging that many car drivers, even if not the ones I know, go to all that trouble.

[StressedDave]

A couple of years ago I was mostly using public transport or cycling to work. I'd go out to practice/drive for fun, because otherwise I wouldn't have been driving at all (and with wales on the doorstep, it would have been rude not to!).

apart from the Wales bit... that's me.

I do however try to drive my best regardless of journey - but it is still tailored to the passenger - mrs gannet likes to take in the scenery a little more that I do...

Yes, but she will get more scenery to view if you drive with a little more verve.

[TripleS]

....the feelings of the passenger are a valid part of how you drive are they not - so therefore a valid discussion...
I have certainly had better drivers (of whom there are many!) drive me in a way I wouldn't have driven, but I trust that they can spot issues / plan / etc. better than I can, so there is always that irony that a technically better driver might cause discomfort... but if we factor in passenger enjoyment then a technically better driver doesn't necessarily meana better drive / driver... (if that makes sense!)

Alasdair

Yes, I think that makes sense. IMHO a lot of normal passengers, i.e. those who are not really interested in (or knowledgeable about) driving, wouldn't thank you for giving them an 'advanced' drive.

[TripleS]

....I have never actually driven off the road (unintentionally )

Alasdair

You need to get out more.

In truth I have driven off the road unintentionally, and it was very upsetting at the time. It was my first car, then three months old, and I put it off the road in snowy conditions. It happened on the A171 a few miles from Cloughton, at a right then left S bend, but (apart from my excessive speed) what unstuck me was the fact that the road dropped quite suddenly just before we reached the end of the bend. Result: a lot of fishtailing along the road, which I thought I was coping with, then it presented me with a slide I couldn't catch and we made a brief contact with a stone wall.