Be Very Afraid

I am embarking on one of the most terrifying journeys one can imagine. I am teaching my daughter to drive.

Let me say from the get go that she is, for a new driver, very good. She's basically careful, sees the road well, brakes and accelerates reasonably smoothly, and takes instruction well for a teenager. However, this does nothing to advance a feeling of calm and well-being.

I have strong opinions about driving and I drive in a way that reflects a particular philosophy. I know this is shocking that I have a philosophy of driving, but there you go. I haven't had an accident in over 30 years so it's hard to convince me that I'm wrong. My driving is based on two facts:

1. The idea of driving is to get from one place to another without bumping into anything. A corollary is that stationary things are easier to avoid than moving things.
   
2. Driving is the single most dangerous thing you do in your life (I think taking a shower is a distant second)

A number of strategies flow from these two facts. Most are based on the idea that you are safest if you can avoid driving with another car within bumping distance. So you don't drive next to anyone, go traffic speed to avoid passing or being passed, drive in the left lane on a freeway, and never count on anyone else to do the right thing.

Following this philosophy, or any other basic driving instruction, is predicated on the ability to drive in a straight line and to execute left and right turns at approximately a right angle. And this is where the adventure begins.

First let's talk about the straight line thing. We all know that the shortest distance between 2 points is straight line and so we should try to drive this way. Road design. however, conspires to thwart this in two ways. First of all, roads by necessity have to avoid things like trees and houses and streams, so many roads have curves. Second, roads are not flat. They are built to "crown" in the center and slope down to the right. This is to encourage water to flow off the road. Gravity therefore continually pulls the car to the right and the driver has to continually guide the car back to the left. New drivers forget to do this periodically, and also have an understandable fear of cars in the adjacent lane, so if you're sitting on the right side of the car, it's best to stay alert. Or wear a blindfold.

Turning is also a challenge. Cars are hard to turn. They're big heavy things and you have to control a whole bunch of things at the same time. You have to turn the wheel enough that the car turns and then recover it before it continues to turn after. This is astonishingly hard for new drivers, and I think it always catches their parent/instructor by surprise.

So we made it through a week of this with only one dent in the car. You have to resign yourself to dents if you're going to allow a new driver to take control of your car. This is why I'm doing this and not my wife. I'm keeping it there as a reminder.

I'll post on this again after we've been on a highway.