Driving requires experience, knowledge, and patience. These requirements often overwhelm new motorists, leading to some serious learner driver mistakes. On average, learners need the best part of 80 hours to achieve a passable driving standard, so don’t worry too much about these mistakes at the start of your journey.
Understanding the mistakes helps learner drivers to build up confidence alongside their new motoring skills. Driving towards these points of difficulty should make you a well-rounded driver, helping you learn from your driving lessons.
Struggling With the Biting Point
One of the most fundamental yet difficult parts of driving, the biting point haunts drivers right up until it becomes second nature. The biting point, where the clutch and accelerator balance to move the car forwards, can be tough to get your head around. To make matters worse, biting points change from car to car. If you’re taking lessons in one car and driving with your family in another, it’s even harder to adjust.
Learner driver mistakes often involve the biting point, from slow starts to stalls and over-revving. Eventually, new motorists learn to listen to their car and feel for the biting point, finding it time after time with ease.
Late Indications of Learner Driver Mistakes
Forgetting to use your indicator is a sure indication of motoring inexperience. Learner driver mistakes include indicating too late, indicating the wrong way, and not indicating at all. As you learn, your driving instructor will teach you to signal well in advance and plan ahead for your turnings, junctions, and lane changes.
Not Selling Your Mirror Checks
While some among us may be used to checking the mirror every 5-8 seconds, when you learn to drive, it becomes a necessity. Before your feet even press the pedals, you should check all the mirrors in order to make sure the car’s safe. However, another issue causes further learner driver mistakes: proving your mirror-checks to your driving instructor. To drive the point home, pointedly turn your head towards each mirror and avoid mistakes.
Going the Wrong Speed
Finding the right speed can be tricky, and learners often go too slow rather than too fast. New motorists often drive slower instinctively, as it feels safer and gives them more time to think and react. However, driving at 5 miles per hour, especially in a faster speed limit area, is not worth the extra reaction time: in fact, it hinders safe driving far more than it helps.
Learner Driver Mistakes with Positioning
The best drivers plan ahead, anticipating hazards rather than reacting as they appear. Positioning proves key to motoring preparedness, yet it ranks high among learner driver mistakes. Whether it’s following the road and staying evenly between the lines or keeping a safe stopping distance between you and the car in front, simple positioning tips go a long way towards safe, successful driving. Planning ahead for junctions and roundabouts by getting into the correct lane early is a great step for learners, no matter how simple it sounds.
Missing the Signs
Every learner driver should be familiar with road signs, as the theory test covers them extensively. However, in truth, practical and theory are whole different ball games, which is why each has a separate exam. Driving can be overwhelming, and learner driver mistakes occur when you focus too much on the tarmac and not enough on what’s around it. Reading, remembering, and acting upon the signs becomes crucial to safe driving, especially speed limits, stop signs, and one-way systems.
However, new drivers need to read contextual signs while they’re on the road, along with the road signs themselves. For example, streetlights in a built-up area generally suggest a 30mph zone, and driving rain means you have to put your wipers on and extend your stopping distance. Reading the signs, literally and contextually, gives learners the best chance to succeed behind the wheel.
Learner Driver Mistakes with Miscommunication and Frustration
Communication and patience help human interactions of all sorts run smoothly, and the driver/learner or driver/invigilator dynamic is no exception. Learner driver mistakes occur when new motorists feel too overwhelmed or nervous to speak up. It’s a driving instructor’s job to structure and guide learners’ experiences on the road. If you’re feeling frustrated, or need a break, let your driver know. If you don’t understand a situation or need more support, draw on professional help to get through it.
Inconsistent Learning
So many learner journeys fall by the wayside when new drivers don’t keep at it. The 80 hours on the road won’t help anywhere near as much if they’re at month-apart intervals. When you turn up on time every week, or even a couple of times a week, you’re best placed to develop the confidence and experience to manage your learner driver mistakes.
Conclusions: Learning the Lessons to Avoid Learner Driver Mistakes?
No one avoids learner driver mistakes completely. However, with enough driving lessons and the right instructor, you can learn from your mistakes and excel on the road.