Our Cars: Charlotte Cobbs
19 January 2012: Independent driving
It was back to normal today as Vaughan sat beside me and I drove his car. But, it didn’t take long for things to change slightly again. Yes, I was in a familiar car, driving around familiar surroundings with my instructor, but to follow on from Samantha’s lesson, Vaughan continued to gently hand the reins over to me more so I don’t rely on him so much.
As we saw the typical roads disappear in the rear-view mirror, Vaughan asked me to ‘follow the signs to’. Some of you may recognize this phrase as part of the new ‘independent driving’ section of the practical test, where the examiner will either ask you to ‘follow the signs to ...’ or show you a diagram of three directions, which you’ll have to remember and follow for 10 minutes of the test.
Anyway, I ‘followed the signs to’, with Vaughan chipping in with the odd “turn left at the end of the road” if there weren’t any signs around. Eventually we can to dual-carriageways for the majority of the journey as Vaughan tried to get my confidence back up and stop me looking like a drink-driver.
It seemed his attempt was thwarted at first as I came racing round a blind bend at 60mph to meet a cyclist - dressed in black with no fluorescent clothing on whatsoever, may I add - and Vaughan had to steer the car out of the way as I got up behind her.
But, however annoyed I was with myself for not spotting the cyclist sooner, it made me more alert. So much so, that when we came up to slip road on the left, I automatically checked it.
Good job too as a car, towing a caravan, was flying onto the dual-carriageway with no sign of slowing down, so I checked my right-hand mirror, signaled and moved over.
So thanks to that numpty, I was able to redeem myself. With this, my confidence did rise as intended. In fact, it rose to the point that when I looked down, the speedo was reading over 70mph!
We came off the A24, going through a few 40mph-roads before taking “the first exit, left” on the last roundabout, ending up in a tiny local village, filled with parked cars, buses and pedestrians - you name it - not to mention a really steep hill.
At least it meant we could get away from the caravan we’d been following since we came off the A24. Vaughan got me to drive around the tiny village twice (that’s how small it was).
I put myself in a bit of a sticky situation as I didn’t change into second gear at the top of the hill the first time so I had to put the clutch down and change it on the hill. Not recommended! But, I sorted it and before I knew it, I was ‘following the signs to’ again.
We ended up in a petrol station where Vaughan got me to pull over in a very-lightly-marked parking bay to talk about the drive. “It had felt like a shambles to me”, I told him when he asked how I thought the drive had gone. Unlike me, he seemed reasonably happy with it apart from the odd hiccups like the cyclist. I do need to watch my control of the car though.
To finish the lesson off, I drove home with only little directions from Vaughan at the beginning. I drove the rest of the way back by myself once I knew where I was. This may not seem very big but Vaughan and I both know how shocking my sense of direction is. It also showed an element of independence from Vaughan too, which was the aim of the lesson.
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