I had a lot of anxiety about driving. Next to moving to a place where we can count the number of people we know on one hand, driving in a backwards car on the wrong side of the road has caused me a weird amount of stress. To overcome it, I decided to book a “confidence course” with a local driving school.
There are a surprising amount of driving courses available in the greater Southampton area, and all it took was a quick email to one, describing that I was coming from the US and wanted to better understand the rules of the road, to be paired with a local instructor for 5 hours of general driving instruction.
On the first day of my lessons, I was picked up by my instructor, Fenella, and we set out to hit the road. The first thing I quickly noticed was that I had to shift my mindset about what driving on the road means. In the States, your car is in your lane, and that lane is yours barring something truly unexpected. Once behind the wheel, I had to throw all of that away and appreciate that here, it’s more that this is the road, space is limited, and we’re all in this together to figure out how to make it work. Which means that it may be that you’re pulling over to let someone pass, backing up so that someone else can get by, or violently slamming on your brakes so that you avoid flattening a group of adorable schoolchildren darting out in front of you on their bikes.
There are a ton of road signs. Really there are probably more than are necessary, because there’s a lot of signage utilized for very obvious things. And even though there are gobs of signs, some of the most important information is painted on the road. So, good luck figuring out your lane when the traffic is heavy. Additionally, if you’re entering a roundabout, and want to take the most far-right of the exits, you need to turn your right blinker on, enter going to the left, turn off your blinker upon entering, and then turn your blinker back on to the left when you’re ready to exit.
Today, I also learned about the Magic Roundabout from my new colleagues, and I may make sure that my routes are always designed to avoid it at all costs– given its five mini-roundabouts, arranged in a circle around a sixth larger one.
Overall, while it does feel a little weird sometimes, the driving wasn’t too bad as long as I remained very focused, which I think is typically the goal anyway. The UK also has some very strict policies about distractions in the car, such as hands-free phone policies, no talking on your cell phone while driving, and dogs being restrained while operating the car. I still haven’t told Watson that he will no longer be able to fling his body from the backseat into my lap while I’m driving 60 MPH down the highway.
I’ve got an hour of lessons remaining this week, and we’re going to work on parking. This will include parallel, street, and car park spaces. The difference in spatial reasoning and incredibly small size of auto parking spots has me wondering how exactly I’ll handle it, but I’ll keep you posted!
Carolina to Crumpets 