I hope Sara’s story may inspire more learners to overcome their driving anxieties.
Her story gets stuck in my mind for long periods of time, that I feel compelled to write it down in hopes that it can benefit all those similar to Sara. The reason that I keep thinking about her, is that her story seems to repeat again and again but through different people battling their own anxieties, similar to Sara’s.
Sara started her first driving lesson with us in mid December 2014, while she was living around Carlingford back then. Soon she felt satsified with our teching methods and proceeded to refer her friend to our school. The funny thing is, her friend quickly and happily passed her driving test while she was still in the middle of a dark tunnel.
Many of her struggles came from her overbearing and significantly higher levels of anxieties when it came to driving. She seemed to have many worries, but was unable to scan successfully (awareness and analysis of surrounding environment), therefore her driving felt unnatural, crooked and forced somehow. For example even if there was another car on left side of the road, she would not hesitate to move left. We tried our best to correct her way of “driving”, and though she made progress, the whole learning process felt slow and difficult. After 12 hours of training, we managed to “finish” the skills content and started one or two mock tests in which she did not score well. Ignoring our advice not to attempt the P test, she went ahead and failed to no one’s surprise.
She took a break after the fail, and contacted us after two months. We suggested that she should do the test at Blacktown, which should generally be easier for her. She did two more lessons, without much improvement, and she stopped training again.
Three months later, I almost forgot about her until she suddenly contacted us saying that she already book the test at Blacktown next week, and just wanted a lesson before the test. I really doubted that she could pass after one lesson but I arranged the lesson anyway. In the lesson she turned out to be very logical and rational in her decisions regarding the driving environment and drove just as she was trained to. I felt confident in her driving, and she looked like a complete stranger to me. She passed with no question the week after.
Sara told me, she just suddenly clicked about the true driving I had been talking about since lesson one. So I guess the credits should go to her for overcoming her own anxieties of driving.
If you have similar situation of Sara, I want you to believe that you can do it, at the right timing and with the right help.
