Badly Equipped Drivers Through Poor Driver Training

About 25% of the road phobia and driving anxiety cases that we deal with are from the inadequately prepared and poor driver training group. These are people who have fallen victim to the inept basic driver training system that operates within the UK.

The driving test fails us all, every time

We often say at Ride Drive, as soon as you pass your driving test the driving test immediately fails you. That is because once you pass the driving test you are on your own. There is no grading, no continuing support or a process by which the fledgling driver can make that transgression from tearing up the L–plates to functioning as a mainstream competent motorist.

Drivers Who Find it Difficult To Cope After The Driving Test

When we first begin to drive it is usually in a low powered small car, fitted with dual controls and with a driving instructor in the passenger seat, ready to catch us if we fall.

Not only that, but we are even told where to go. Left at the next junction, at the roundabout, take the second exit. So, we don’t even get to decide where to go.

Upon passing the driving test
we are just abandoned

Come the day we pass the test, suddenly we are abandoned. Cast adrift in a little boat onto the ocean. Now we have to decide for ourselves the route we take.

Not only that, but now have full responsibility and no dual controls, or anyone to operate them. We are now on our own, and having to cope with the complexities of real driving when equipped with grossly inadequate skills.

Those Who Stopped Driving After Passing the Driving Test

Some people, from the point of passing their driving test, will not drive on a regular basis, and sometimes they have stopped driving altogether. For younger people this may be due to attending university and perhaps not being able to afford to drive a car. It could be they are in a situation where they have no need to drive a car, perhaps moving to a busy city, such as London, where to drive a car is a nuisance and less preferable to a reasonable public transport system.

Feeling inadequate when sharing the road space with people
with apparently higher grade skill can initiate road phobia

Others simply feel they are not competent enough to drive a car on their own at the point of passing the test, as they did not have chance to acquire the skills to cope, and so put it off. With lack of confidence, perception of high expectations of them in others, it can all get too much to cope with, and is not helped by their inadequate driver training.

Taking a long break from driving a car is not healthy

Consciously avoiding driving a car, whilst subconsciously fearing it, will become habit after a while. Once habit is established it is comfortable, but only whilst remaining within the parameters of the habit. Trying to break habit becomes uncomfortable, and therefore the more we stay comfortable the more deep–rooted into habit we become.

By abstaining from driving for a year or more it becomes deep habit. Breaking that habit is not only uncomfortable, but it can actually become frightening. The thought of driving becomes a monster, excuses are found to avoid driving altogether, and with fear becoming ever greater.

As with common road phobia,
stress and duress is the key component

As a consequence of poor driver training, the poorly trained driver can become over stressed, as far from being a pleasure, driving becomes a real worry. It can be, like in the case of common road phobia, when stress is almost at its peak, there is a trigger moment that marks the point road phobia is formed. In our experience this trigger can be something as simple as stalling when entering a roundabout, which is actually a common one.

Road Phobia and the More Mature Driver

Perhaps being a mature person, the nervous driver feels they do not have the skills to match their age group and may find they can’t cope with the complexities of operating a vehicle in what seems a hostile environment. This is performance anxiety, as in being made to feel ridiculous by the inability to function as well as others, who have perhaps held a licence for just as long.

Basically, sheer embarrassment will not let them drive the car, and with that will come a lack in self–belief and self–esteem. There may also become a fear of crashing when getting back behind the wheel. Perhaps it would make life very easy if it was a simple matter of having a few top–up driving lessons to do the trick, but it doesn’t seem to work like that.

The UK driver training system not only help to cause road phobia,
and driving instructors will often make it worse

In fact, we have found when interviewing many driving anxiety cases, that within the group who had poor driver training, learner–driving schools, unless the driving instructor has received additional and specialised training to deal with driving anxiety and rod phobia, he or she can actually make the situation worse. After all, aren’t they part of the system that helped to develop the road phobia in the first place?

Driving instructors generally do not understand road phobia and will try to deal with it as a matter of boosting confidence. Consequently, and so very often, the driving instructor will take their road phobia driver straight into a terror environment, a situation that is highly dangerous.

Putting a phobic driver into a situation
that is outside their ability to cope

When overwhelmed, or over–stressed, the phobic driver is just likely to stamp on the brake and stop the car dead, even if it is in lane–2 of the motorway. We have knowledge of a driving instructor telling the phobic driver they are highly dangerous and shouldn’t be driving at all. Hardly helpful to someone who is going through sheer hell just to function as a normal human being.

Performance anxiety plays a very big part of the difficulty for the phobia driver to cope, and the process of restoring self–belief is one that has to be carefully managed, and which takes time and patience.

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This page was last updated
Monday, 10-May-2010

Poor Driver Training Leading to Road Phobia