Our Cars: Charlotte Cobbs
1 November 2011: Woah, what are you doing?!
I was driving on the A27 dual carriageway with my dad. I know I was driving on the A27 in the last blog too but I promise it’s not the only place I drive. It’s just the nearest dual carriageway to practice driving fast.
Anyway, we were on the A27 and it was all going well. It always begins well, so you know what’s coming next. We were happily driving along, with Dad being quite calm and chatty. There was a little junction coming up on the left hand side with a removal van sitting at it. The van was creeping forward but it looked as though it was going to stop. So, I carried on to get past the junction, allowing the van to come onto the dual carriageway behind me, rather than holding everyone else up.
But, no – as with a lot of drivers, he must’ve seen my ‘L‘ plates, and thought: “I’m not getting stuck behind a learner”, or maybe he didn’t look at all, so he just carried on pulling out regardless, causing me, and everyone behind me, to slow down. Great move, mate! You wouldn’t have passed your test for that ingenious piece of driving if you were a learner! Why is it that as soon as most people get their full licence, they just forget what it’s like to be a learner and become inconsiderate to those who are learning? I won’t tell you what my passenger was saying to the van driver at this point.
Idiotic van drivers aside, the rest of the drive went well and we managed to have a laugh about it once my dad had vented his frustrations and anger about the situation. Arriving at our destination brought new challenges - parallel parking in a very tight space. I’ve only ever parallel parked between two cars like this once before (for the test, a parallel park only consists of parking behind one car nowadays, not between two), but the space has never been this small. Nevertheless, with assistance from a now-vented Dad, I managed to do it. Spatial awareness problems? What spatial awareness problems?
The drive back home wasn’t as good. OK, I didn’t have an impatient van driver to contend with this time, but it was coming to the end of the day consisting of lots of driving practice and I began to lose my concentration about halfway through the journey, leading to little mistakes such as nearly mounting the curb whilst looking to the right at a T-Junction before another dual carriageway.
These are the reasons why I’m still having lessons - to iron out these mistakes so that other drivers and I will be safe on the road when I pass my test. As long as we all stay away from removal van drivers!
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