Our Cars: Charlotte Cobbs
9 January 2012: A bad feeling about this
Today was never going to be a good lesson as I’d had a bad feeling about it, for whatever reason, from before Vaughan even arrived.
When I got into the car, Vaughan asked me if I could drive to a little local village. I knew it but didn’t drive there too often. My instant reaction was: “No!”. We both know my sense of direction is shocking! But, as we broke it apart bit by bit, I realised I could do it. So I did - but it wasn’t all plain-sailing.
At only the second T-Junction of the journey, I started to doubt myself; ‘we normally go straight ahead but do I want to or is it just because it’s the normal way we go?’ I went with my gut, and it was the right way, thankfully!
From then on, I knew where I was and where I was going but I was still tense - especially once we came off the second roundabout, onto a country lane. I’ve done this particular one many times before so I should’ve been fine. But, I haven’t gone above 40mph for weeks and I’d lost my confidence with speed. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t creep along it - I did get up to 60mph - but I was weaving all over the place.
At the end of it was a roundabout. I went right, onto another familiar country lane. But the tension and unintended drifting was still there, as old habits came back; staring at road signs and oncoming traffic so I either veer away or towards them. To make matters worse, as I came round a bend on the second country lane, there was a police car with two officers guiding motorists down the road until we passed them. My first encounter with the law, dealt with successfully, even if I should’ve slowed down a little earlier.
Interestingly, Vaughan and I didn’t chat away like we had last week. Maybe that could’ve helped. Then again, talking whilst driving at speed - maybe not!
When we finally got to our destination, I pulled over for Vaughan and I to speak about the terrible drive I’d just done.
Then, it was time for something different - emergency stops. I’d done this exercise with Vaughan right at the beginning of the process and at Mercedes Benz World. Vaughan told me about ABS (Anti-locking Braking System) so I understood what it was and what it did, before he got me to do about 5 of them whilst we drove around the block twice.
The first one was good, with the next three being too heavy on the brakes (but surely you would be if it was real life and you panicked?), finishing off with a ‘perfect’ one.
Following the scary facts he’d told me about speed last lesson, to really hammer the message home, Vaughan waited for the speedo to hit 30mph before saying “Stop!” That was fine. Go again, this time waiting for 35mph to appear. Halting at only 5mph faster felt very different - more like 45mph than 35mph. That makes you think about speeding!
With this in mind, the journey home was smoother, if not a little slower, despite having to deal with cars parked on the side of a 40mph road and having to squeeze through a gap between a lorry’s front and the curb of a one-way street!
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