Whether you’re a novice driver or a veteran, driving training can help you learn to drive safely. Learning the right way is important because it helps you avoid a number of hazards that could lead to accidents.
There are several different types of driving training available, so it’s important to choose a program that suits your needs and preferences.
Basic Skills
Driving is a skill that requires a lot of knowledge and practice. It involves interacting with other drivers, obeying traffic laws and navigating to your destination. It is also important to have strong customer service skills to ensure you provide a positive experience for your passengers and customers.
Regardless of whether you’re learning to drive your own car or taking adult driving classes, you need to know certain basic skills before you can begin the process of getting licensed. Below is a list of the most important skills that you need to master before taking your first driving test.
1. Spatial Awareness: Knowing how much space you have around your vehicle at a given time is an essential skill for all drivers. This will allow you to safely maneuver your vehicle in the event of an emergency, such as if it breaks down or needs repairs.
2. Identifying Speed Differentials: Understanding the difference between how fast you’re going and how fast other vehicles or road users are going is essential for avoiding accidents and other collisions. This can be especially helpful if you need to pass through an intersection or cross over a lane of traffic.
3. Driving in the Rain: The ability to drive safely in torrential rain is an essential skill for all drivers. This is especially true if you are involved in a road trip or need to travel to work during inclement weather.
4. Managing Space and Speed: This is another essential skill that you need to learn in order to drive safely. It involves identifying the speed differentials between you and other drivers or road users, as well as ensuring that you have enough space to safely move your vehicle.
5. Reversing: This is a fundamental skill for all drivers that can be difficult to master, but it is an important one. Having good knowledge of how to reverse your car can save you from many accidents.
6. Keeping Your Vehicle in Good Repair: It is important to know how to maintain your vehicle so that it runs smoothly. This will help you to stay on schedule and prevent issues from affecting your performance.
Intermediate Skills
Learning to drive can be an exciting experience but it can also be a daunting task. In order for your teen to receive a license, they must pass a series of skills tests and learn a variety of driving techniques.
For this reason, many states offer graduated driver’s licensing (GDL) programs for teens. The program helps new drivers to master the skills they need to become safe drivers while learning in a supportive environment.
There are a few key intermediate skills that all new drivers should master in order to pass their driving test and earn a license. These skills include driving in an intersection, backing up, making left and right turns, changing lanes, and more.
In addition, it is a good idea for your teen to practice these skills in different locations, such as parking lots and on familiar roads. This will help them learn the appropriate speed and behavior for various weather, traffic, and time of day conditions.
It is essential to note that speed limits on most roads are posted as a guide only. Your teen should always drive safely within the posted speed limit in good conditions, but they should avoid driving too fast in poor weather or areas with heavy traffic.
Another critical skill that is necessary for safe driving is the ability to estimate the distance between their car and objects or traffic. This requires practice and patience but is an important skill to develop as it will enable your teen to make safe decisions about when to slow down, brake or turn.
You may want to have your teen work on their driving skills in a parking lot where they can use pylons to measure the distance between them and other cars and objects. This will help them learn faster and build a stronger understanding of the speed differentials that they must account for in their driving.
It is also a good idea to remind your teen that they should leave at least 1 second of space between their vehicle and other vehicles on the road when driving. This can help them avoid hitting other cars or other vehicles on the road.
Advanced Skills
Drivers need advanced skills to navigate the roads, and the most effective way to teach drivers about safe driving habits is to give them actual behind-the-wheel instruction. This training is more effective than online training or parking lot simulations because it combines the physical and dynamic realities of traffic with the constant reinforcement of a certified instructor.
Driver’s training programs also can provide drivers with the knowledge and experience they need to avoid the most common types of crashes, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. These include rear-end collisions, head-on crashes, and intersection crashes.
Advanced drivers are also capable of anticipating and preventing situations that can lead to accidents, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. This training helps drivers develop the skills they need to react quickly and safely in a variety of driving conditions, such as bad weather and high-speed traffic.
These courses are available for any driver who has a full license and is willing to spend the time learning these advanced driving skills. They are also helpful for senior drivers who may need to refresh their knowledge or get more practice with certain types of driving.
Another benefit of taking an advanced driving course is that it can help drivers who are tired or drowsy while behind the wheel. Tiredness slows reaction times and impairs judgment, which can increase a driver’s risk of an accident, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Sleepiness can interfere with a driver’s ability to recognize and respond to hazards on the road, including cars in the blind spot and pedestrians who might suddenly step out into the road. It can also cause a driver to fail to notice things in their surroundings that might be dangerous, such as traffic signals or the location of fire trucks on the highway.
In addition, many people don’t realize how easy it is to become disoriented while driving on an unfamiliar route. This can lead to a crash and even death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
IAM RoadSmart, a UK-based road safety charity, offers an advanced motorist course that can be taken by individuals who already have a full license and are looking to improve their on-road skills. The training consists of a series of observed drives, with each student working closely with a trained driver observer over a period of between six and 12 sessions.
Hazard Awareness
Hazard perception, the ability to recognize and avoid potentially dangerous situations on the road, is a skill that can be honed with training. This includes pedestrians crossing the road, broken down vehicles, roadworks, people entering and exiting cars, and other cars that may be stopped ahead of your vehicle or on the side roads.
During driving training, learners are taught how to identify and respond to hazard situations that could cause them to lose control of their vehicle. This is essential for a safe journey on the road and will help them reduce their risk of being involved in an accident.
Drivers can also improve their hazard perception skills through passive training such as watching videos with onscreen hazards and engaging in virtual driving experiences using simulators that administer a variety of hazardous scenarios. These methods have been used to increase the safety of novice drivers for years and are a part of many licensing programs around the world (Haworth et al., 2005).
To learn how to detect hazards, new drivers are asked to watch short video clips of different road conditions and then press a button when they see an onscreen hazard. They are then recorded to measure their skin conductance reactions at the moment when they perceive a hazard, as well as in the moments before that hazard happens (Accident Analysis & Prevention, Vol. 50, 2013).
It is believed that skin conductance is a sign of how sensitive a driver is to a particular hazard and that the more experience they have, the better they are at recognizing a hazardous situation. The researchers tested this theory in an experiment by asking young-inexperienced and experienced drivers to observe six hazard perception movies and pressing the button whenever they identified a hazard. They found that young drivers were more hesitant to react to immaterialized unplanned hazards than experienced drivers, but that they all responded at the same time when a planned hazardous event occurred.
Using this evidence, researchers are testing whether hazard awareness can be trained and if it is possible to speed up the learning process for drivers. They are currently recruiting 1,200 parent-teen dyads for an NIH-funded randomized controlled trial to evaluate the Drivingly Program, which aims to test whether a comprehensive program of hazard awareness training, on-road driver assessment and feedback, 1:1 parent sessions with a trained health coach, and online logbook and psychoeducational modules for families might reduce the crash rate for new drivers.