How do adults manage it?

I’m a few years off from getting my driver’s license, but I’m practicing driving with my parents. I got to a church parking lot, and I wanted to use the gas. I was super stressed out because there was so much stuff around the parking lot that doing anything more than lightly touching the gas would speed me up a lot. Mind you, speeding up being from 2 mph to 20 mph.

How do people do the stuff they need to do on a highway at 60 mph?

Sorry if this isn’t related to the other stuff on this forum, but I didn’t know wherever else to post.

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i’m currently teaching my 15 year old how to drive and she is in the same place as you are

It’s like anything else that relies on muscle memory - practice and lots of it. You’ll get there, but you may not realize you’ve gotten there until long after you get there. If that makes sense.

I still get driver’s ed jitters when I get a new car or drive a rental.

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Divane is right, it’s all muscle memory. I don’t even think all that much when driving which horrifies me when thinking about about my kids doing the same

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Got my driver’s license in 1985. It’s all about practice and yes, muscle memory. Don’t expect it to happen overnight, and don’t get discouraged. You can do it!

I certainly understand how it would be intimidating. The first time I ever sat behind the wheel of a car was when my dad took me out to a nice empty parking lot. Sitting behind the wheel of the family car that afternoon - might be the most scared I’ve ever been in my life. I got some practice in but… let’s just say I’m glad my dad was able to find a large, 100% empty, parking lot for me to practice on. So I know how you feel. That was nearly 40 years ago and I remember it like it was yesterday.

Just hang in there! Good luck!

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I don’t know why, but the gas pedal was super sensitive on my mom’s car. If I lean into it even a little bit, I go 30 mph. How do you get a feel for the gas?

Also, the parking lot in question had a lot of corners and obstacles, and I had a hard time not hard turning. Is it just little corrections, when do you have to hard turn?

I am assuming that the car is an automatic transmission car, which almost all cars are these days. Every car feels a little bit different, one thing you might want to consider is that if you just take your foot off the brake, the car will roll forward by itself, slowly, as long as you are on a relatively level surface. That might help get you used to things before you start picking up speed. As far as “getting a feel” for the gas pedal, all I can really say is to be gentle with it at first. Trust me that you aren’t alone in having difficulty here. I had the same issue back in the day, and both of my kids did when I taught them. I know it’s intimidating, but you’ll get it. Just take it slow and easy and in time it will come naturally.

Try to avoid “hard” turns if you can, but it really depends on how far away you are from the obstacle in question. Again, it comes down to practice. Ideally, at first, it would be best if you could find the emptiest parking lot around. I used a high school football stadium parkig lot when teaching my kids - it’s always empty when there isn’t a game going.

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I also feel really overwhelmed driving any new car, so don’t feel bad, OP! Once you get a feel for the car you will drive often, it will be a lot easier. The best advice I can give is to really break it down and focus on one basic skill at a time. Don’t try to turn and avoid obstacles until you really feel comfortable stopping and starting. Take a lot of breaks and deep breaths, roll down the windows, whatever makes you feel more at ease.

Highways are very chaotic and I would not even worry or think about those for a good while. Most other scenarios will be a bit slower, so start with those and ease into it.

It reminds me of when I was learning to drive and my best friend’s dad made me BACK down his very long and windy gravel country driveway in his big jeep (with deep ditches on each side of the path) several times until I got comfortable with it. I was so worried I would get stuck in the ditch and damage his car. He would also randomly get out of the car in the middle of a country road and make me start driving LOL. I am very overwhelmed by stressful situations and this was not easy for me. Sometimes the lack of comfort zone is helpful and other times it is not!

You’ll get it, don’t worry! You have plenty of time :slight_smile: I’m sure you built your WoW skills up a lot over time as you played and it’s much the same with learning to drive. You’ll eventually work yourself up to more difficult abilities and scenarios.

Just remember that driving is all about muscle memory. At first, you’ll feel overwhelmed because you have to learn on the go how to 1.-drive a vehicle and 2.- managing distances, getting used to the dimensions of the vehicle. Once you have more spacial awareness ingrained into your brain, and you get used to the vehicle, then you can start driving around suburban zones with low traffic, etc.

It’s perfectly normal to feel a bit stressed at first, just keep building that muscle memory and you’ll get the hang of it in no time.

By way of city life, I don’t have a driver’s license despite being in my 30s. Just haven’t needed it, and I don’t particularly care for the fees and responsibilities brought by car ownership.

That said, I’d like to be able to drive, but what scares me way more than my own capabilities (I’m confident that I’d be a decent driver), is the sheer insanity of other drivers I’ve seen both in person while taking rides from others (friends, ubers, etc) and online. It feels like a lot of states hand out licenses to anybody with a pulse and it makes me want to avoid roads as much as possible.

To add some perspective, driving is about both the basic physical act of manipulating the controls and maintaining situational awareness and thinking a few stop lights ahead. In the beginning, when a driver is first understanding the feedback from control inputs and building insight - the basis of learning, insight - those concepts will be foreign and somewhat meaningless (situational awareness, thinking ahead).

So, don’t worry about the highway just yet. That’s more advanced. First, understand the basics: where to position your feet, where to position your hands, what you want to be looking at (and when), how to manage the cars forward momentum and energy so that you understand how the car will respond to varying degrees of pressure on the gas and brakes.

If you’re not keeping your heel on the floor for your gas pedal, when you move your foot to it, you may accelerate too quickly because your foot has nothing to rest on - besides the pedal. Keeping your heel on the floor will allow better control - small, pivoting motions forward using the toe translates to smaller gas pedals movements. If you push forward with all your foot, much more difficult to control pressure.

I’ve been flight instructing for 13+ years and the concepts of pressure-feedback is valid in both driving and flying, the former to a lesser extent but consider the feedback sensation that needs to be learned to go from a very sudden, jerky stop, to a smooth deceleration to a stop.

Keep practicing while being sensitive to your pedal and steering wheel inputs to build comfort on the basics and then add on additional complexity.

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Don’t learn in a parking lot would be a start. Also, get on the open road, a nice quiet rural road if possible.

Also, try to go with someone like a driving school. People emotionally involved and attached to their cars are not a great place to learn from.

… Reminds me when I came close to having a fist fight with my Dad because he didn’t like that I missed one gear. :rofl:

I can’t get a learner’s permit though, so roads might be out for a while

True, unless you’re somewhere near some old backroads with no traffic. Where I live it’s pretty easy to find places like that, which is why I started driving on busier roads when I was 12 (yes I am aware that’s not legal and is frowned upon)

Lucky. I live on a relatively busy road, and by that, I mean “death sentence with or without driving practice”. I also live like 3 miles from Burtonsville, which is also incredibly busy. Nearest road like that here in Montgomery County is a section of I-29. I already went on the highway alone once (I got on I-495 on a bike) and it was scary as heck.

I’m not overly familiar with how things work there, but don’t they have something like get a learner test done then be allowed on the road to learn?

Here they sit a theory and oral exam, then they can get an instructor or get someone to teach them on the road.

Then there’s another theory exam, and a practical. That lets you drive solo or with a fully licensed driver. Also has a curfew.

Then another set of tests and you are ready to roll.

How does someone learn without being allowed on a road? Sorry it’s just baffling to me.

Speaking as someone who started learning as a kid in a parking lot and taught both his kids in a parking lot (at first), I gotta disagree here. You need at least a little bit of time in as consequence-free an environment as possible and a parking lot is better for that than a road with other drivers on it.

Don’t get me wrong, you need to move to roads pretty quick once you get the basic mechanics down of how to brake, how to accelerate, and how to steer. And that very basic level of learning needs to take place in an environment when you don’t have to worry about potential collisions.

I don’t have a license OR a learner’s permit yet. Also, I’m not chancing the highway AGAIN without a license, I already did that with a bike

(It was just the Capital Beltway, but still, giving my mom an aneurysm is not a great idea)

I suspect this won’t help, but I’ll throw it out there anyway. When my dad was teaching me, we’d get up at 2 or 3 in the morning and he’d have me drive around the nearest actual town for an hour or so (we lived way out in the middle of nowhere - ironically, the place is now all McMansions).

Of course, that depends on your parents being willing to get up before dark-thirty in the morning. My dad was kind of crazy that way. Apparently, so am I.

Another option might be to ask them to take you out to some suburban or rural area on the weekends and let you spend a few hours driving around.

My dad drives stick, and only gets up at 5.

My mom drives auto, but only gets up at 7, later most days.

Second option seems better