What was your first day at school like?.... Did you feel anxious? Did you feel awkward about the person seated next to you? Did the teacher make you feel like you were doing something wrong all the time? Seems an odd thing to say, but your first day at a driving lesson might seem very similar to your first day at school. Feeling anxious, awkward, and making a mistake are just part of the learning process when learning to drive, especially when its your first day at lessons.
Students taking up lessons can find their first day at driving school quite unnerving and stressful , not just because of the drive, but due to the other factors mentioned above as well. Fortunately, professional drive schools have studied these initial reactions and try their best to ‘unfreeze’ their students quickly, so that lesson training can be done efficiently with the relaxed attitude of the student. The professional training of the instructor helps greatly to create a conducive environment for the learner to gather the lessons learned.
What are first driving lessons like?
Like mentioned above, the first day or your first drive lesson with an instructor by your side can seem somewhat ‘strange’ especially to students who have had supplementary training before by their parents or a guardian. But there’s a difference between learning from a non certified instructor and a well experienced driving instructor. Students who enrol at a professional driving school, always benefit more than those who would like to take the alternate route by training with a parent, relative or a guardian.
Getting to ‘Know Your Instructor’ or KYI as we’d like to call it, is an important step in the learning process. Students may find listening to instructions while not making eye contact with the person giving them a little distracting. The relationship between a student and instructor builds a connection that will help the student’s memory and further understanding the lessons. It is important to note that an instructor operates under a lot of pressure. Keeping a close eye on the student and their actions, all the while ensuring no danger is present on the road, is no easy task.
The first day at a driving lesson may seem pretty basic. Getting to know the car controls, the dashboard panel and what each knob, and switch does is a part of the basic training. Following this, the instructor would proceed to teach start and stop techniques, they may also ask the student to drive in a sparsely populated section of a suburb or town. This will help the student to feel relaxed and familiarize themselves with the control of the vehicle, it will also signal the beginning to their first lessons on the road while learning how to navigate, handle the vehicle when on a busy road or street.
The objective of instructor-based driving lessons is to make safe drivers and driving safer. The Australia Road Safety Country Profile 2021 is particularly interesting to read when comparing statistics. According to this report the recorded number of fatalities in 2020 had decreased by 7.8% compared to the previous year, however the target to reach in reducing road accidents was not even close.
The estimated target was a 30% reduction in accidents. The essential need to making Australia’s roads a safer place is very clear if road safety targets are to be met. And what better way to spearhead the safety aspect than to create safe drivers? Driving schools play a big role in safe driving and they strive to make this their priority as part of their functionality. While many driving schools exist, it is important that students evaluate and do their own research when looking to learn driving.
A few tips to watch out for when choosing a school would be:
- Reputation – Does the school have a good reputation for producing quality drivers.
- Seniority in the field – Getting to know how long a drive school has been in the business is a good way to gauge the experience they posses. An experienced school most probably will have a well experienced staff too.
- Instructor quality – Lets be fair and I guess safe to say, that no student can predict or know how the instructor will relate to them. Its only after they meet and begin lessons that the student will be able to know if the instructor’s approach in teaching is good as they say it is. Here again reputation matters, students might want to check reviews, speak to people who have been students themselves and keep track of their social media audiences. This will help to know if the school has created a good image for themselves or not.
- Updated syllabus – While most driving schools in Australia are current with their syllabus, there might be some who lack behind and are not as frequently referring to the latest updates. Being updated is important since road rules and policies can change at any time. Make sure to do a bit of research for this.
Safe driving is what we all need to be aware of. Australia hopes to reduce it’s annual road related fatalities by at least 50% and serious injuries by at least 30% by the year 2030. Lets hope good training makes that difference.
The first day of training might be somewhat a slow start to any beginner. But with a good driving school and good instructors, learner students can expect to have the best outcomes. While safety is the keyword, drive schools and governments need to and do play a greater role in creating that safe environment. And lets hope the future targets of managing minimal fatalities will be a reality before much longer.