Last week, just a month short of 24, I got my driver’s license.
It’s an exciting time for me. In the past few days I’ve been getting used to familiar routes from a new perspective; I can buy groceries without having to wait for my parents to be ready, I can make distances I usually cover by walking, I could get up right now and abandon this post to go buy some ice cream for absolutely no reason. It’s liberating, being able to drive, and it feels like I’ve taken a step forward that I wasn’t sure I ever would, and it’s a big step in finding where I’m going next.
It’s also a big step I wasn’t sure I’d make. I took driver’s ed this year and got my license because I was ready, and “ready” is something so elusive I didn’t think it was coming. Driving is something almost everyone’s used to, at least in concept, but I think people either forget or don’t really think about the concept of what it actually is. Driving scared me! It was a huge responsibility in safety, both towards myself and to everyone around me, and it was also fairly different from almost anything else I did in everyday life.
I’m not going to break down my paranoias, justified or otherwise, in this post. This isn’t about scaring readers into reconsidering how much they like driving, or if they even should. What I will do is break down why it was so hard for me to get used to the idea of driving, and why it was so important to wait until I was ready.
Here is a list of things you need to be aware of on the road.
- Yourself
- Where the car is on the road
- how fast you’re going
- if there are any signs around you
- stoplights
- stopsigns
- pedestrians
- crosswalks
- pedestrians who don’t use the crosswalks (guilty)
- if there’s anyone in front of you
- or on your left
- or your right
- behind you
- animals
- weather
- the gas tank
- the stars
- the moon
- the sky
- the alignment of Jupiter
Obviously some of those are less important than others, but my point is there’s a lot happening at once and it’s the driver’s responsibility to pay attention to all of those things. It’s not at the same time, but those tiny shifts in attention as you try to get as much information as quickly as possible can build up quickly. If you’re not careful, it’s a perfect storm of sensory overload.
I couldn’t even begin to process all of that when I was a teenager. I was scared of other cars; I was fine sitting in the passenger side, but as soon as I was behind the wheel it was do or die. Every other vehicle was a danger, every pedestrian a potential unfortunate in my path. I feared the road, but more than that, I feared myself. I just could not keep up with everything that was happening, and it paralyzed me.
I don’t have a cure for that. I can’t tell you how to quickly work through those things and get to where you want to be. I started trying to drive when I was 18; it’s around five years later that I finally felt comfortable enough to take the driver’s exam. So much of that time was spent just driving in circles in a shopping plaza parking lot, and even that was daunting for the longest time. Getting out onto the actual road was a huge difficulty for weeks, if only because I was scared I might see another car.
The best advice I can give for this situation is this: don’t force it. Like so many things in life, pushing yourself into something because you “should” be ready, because other people your age are doing it, is rarely a risk worth taking. Don’t push yourself into situations you’re not prepared for just because you “should” be – take your time. Take classes. Assess what you can and can’t manage, and stand by those assessments. Don’t let other people tell you you’re wrong about yourself. Take your time, don’t risk trying to drive before you’re fully ready and capable of it. Don’t choose your hurt pride over actually getting hurt, because driving still is difficult even after getting comfortable with it.
It took me about five years to get my driver’s license, and even now, as I sit here and think about all the places I can go now without worrying about the 98° Texas heat getting to me, I’m glad I waited until I was ready. It was worth the wait.
Awetistic 