Skillset

When most people think about driver’s education, they are considering the physical skills that are required to operate an automobile.  That’s what it is all about, right?  Well, you do need to acquire a certain level of skill to be able to make a vehicle travel down the road.  At the most basic level you need to know how to turn a key, how to move a gear shift lever, how to turn a steering wheel and how to push a brake and accelerator pedal.  You need to be able to do these things, but driver’s education is much more than that.

Of course it’s not that simple, we not only need the above listed rudimentary skills, but we need a seemingly endless list of many more.  We not only need all of these individual skills, but we also need to know how to do them all at the same time in order to be able to safely operate a motor vehicle.  This concept of skill layering and the intertwining of skills is nothing new to you.  If you have ever learned to do anything, you must realize that nothing is as simple as it seems.  For instance you have likely learned to walk and talk and dress yourself and ride a bike and play a sport or a game.  All of these things require you to be doing multiple small actions which add up to the whole activity.  Heck you’ve learned an endless list of skills by this time in your life, but you have never learned one quite like driving before.

I’m not sure that driving a car takes any more skill or physical ability than playing a sport, but it certainly can have more severe consequences when done improperly.  You can learn to do a layup if you can dribble a basketball, run, jump, aim, throw and land back on your feet, but if you mess up any one of those steps, you aren’t likely to kill yourself or the person next to you.  This isn’t the case with driving.  Sure, there are times when total skill failures can result in nothing tragic happening, but there are also times when it could mean the end for you, your passengers and anyone near you at the time.  I’m not saying this to dissuade you from driving, but I am saying this so that perhaps you will take this new skill set that you need to learn a bit more seriously than you would otherwise.

Sure, it’s fairly easy to make a car move and turn and stop in an open field somewhere with no one around, but it is an entirely different thing when you are travelling at 55 miles per hour with other cars nearby.   And it’s a very different thing in rush hour in downtown Chicago.  In some of these situations, it is quite possible to tun the steering wheel correctly and apply the accelerator properly and still get your self in to a lot of trouble.  You not only need to acquire all of these individual skills, but you also need to be able to do many of them simultaneously. And, on top of all that, you need to understand just when to do what and why.

This is something that all new drivers struggle with.  When you first begin to drive you will be concentrating on the basics and your mind will be pretty much considering them one at a time.  You most likely remember learning to ride a bike.  First someone might have shown you how to turn the petals, and how to turn the handlebars and they probably said that you would need to balance.  Typically, the first few times you tried this your attention was very concentrated on cranking those pedals, holding the handlebars and catching yourself as you fell.  But then, after a few more tries all of a sudden it worked.  You found yourself performing those newly learned skills and balancing all at the same time and it seemed pretty easy.  Then, the next day when you decided to ride your bike, it seemed even easier.

Driving a car is very much like riding a bike.  You start out concentrating on one or maybe two things and you end up just sort of doing it all naturally and all at the same time.  At first you are likely to have trouble regulating your speed because you are just trying to keep it between the lines.  Then, once you get the car up to speed, the instructor might ask you to change lanes.  Well now you need to ad a few more skills to the list of thing that you need to pay attention to.  So, its likely that while you are changing lanes, you are losing speed because you hadn’t thought about your speed for a few seconds.  This all can seem frustrating and stressful at first, but remember this skill set is likely very different from any skill set you’ve had before.  Even if you have driven off road vehicles in the past, it is a whole different thing when you are in traffic.  The good news is that we, your driving instructors, are here to help guide you and to show you that it really can be done as long as you follow the rules and get plenty of practice.

In Wisconsin you must hold your temps for six months and this is a good thing, because it will take you this long to be ready to go out on your own.  After the first few weeks, if you drive often enough you will start to feel fairly confident that you can do this, but like I said earlier, driving is a very complex activity and it is constantly changing depending on your surroundings.  Different terrain, different roads, different traffic patterns, different cities, different types of intersections and an infinite number of different traffic and pedestrian scenarios are all playing out on our streets and you need to be ready for whatever you come across.  If you practice a lot, you will be ready to drive by yourself in six months, but you will never stop learning how to be a better driver.  Believe me, even driving instructors are learning new skills when we run into new driving situations.

We will help guide you through this learning process and give you some insight into all of the different things that you should know about the driver’s ed process.  We will be teaching you a little bit about many of the driving skills you need, but it will be up to you to master them.