It must be that time of year

I feel curmudgeonly. It’s not that I’m stuck in snow. Or stuck indoors, due to Covid. Or frustrated by short-notice cancellations, or a long wait for tests (or pupils absent because of it).

Maybe it’s my age, and having downtime to reflect on life and work. Christmas travel has been easy: longish trips comfortable and quick, with no jams or breakdowns or whiny/sick passengers.

And other drivers have been fine. I was thinking yesterday, returning on a motorway: how often DO I see really bad driving? Very seldom. (Poor, yes; like tailgating or not using brake signals or checking it’s safe to signal. But not truly BAD). It’s even more rare since I became an instructor. So why is that?

I think it’s mainly about time. Timing, more specifically. In driving terms, that means keeping good control of speed. Not going slowly, but not so fast you can’t spot everything that’s happening or where danger might start. I must be more observant as an ADI. I certainly hope so!

Next, it’s about space. Leaving more of it, as a safety zone around things that could change—usually other road users. (Time and space are really the same, when you’re moving: even non-driver Albert Einstein agrees).

Self-preservation helpfully keeps people apart. They know that getting too close can be dangerous. They learn that early on, in relationships, well before learning to drive.

Yet young men, especially, thrill to the adrenaline rush of a chase, or a near-miss, or a scare: for them as much as any poor passenger.  That’s part of how we’re programmed, by evolution. "Training that out" is a hard goal indeed. Teaching someone to think and feel “old before their time” isn’t attractive, and may be impossible when you consider why they behave as they do at that stage of life. Risk is the price we all pay for letting young as well as older adults use their mechanised toys in a shared playground.

I’ve yet to conduct a count of just how many drivers are dangerous, discourteous, sloppy, inattentive, or plain rude. But I suspect it is few. We all do reasonably well, despite the pressures we’re grappling with. We just remember the ones who didn’t. Because, like the young men, we’re made that way … so we’re better equipped to avoid threatening situations.

So, on that positive point, a Happy New Year to you all!