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(Music)
In this lesson, we are going to do some basic driving on the road.
By now you should have had a few lessons off-road or on quiet streets with little or no traffic.
You are ready to start practicing driving on the road when your ability to control the car
is starting to become automatic and you are able to concentrate on the traffic around you, at the same time.
Let's give it a go, Acushla.
The most important part of the body you use for driving is your eyes.
Safe drivers keep their eyes moving -- aiming "high" --
looking as far as 12 seconds ahead and also constantly scanning ahead to get the big picture.
(Well, how far is 12 seconds?)
(Oh, well we have a handy way of finding that out. Just pull over by these garages over to the left here.)
To tell how far ahead of you 12 seconds is, pull over on a reasonably straight piece of road.
As a car goes past you, start counting to 12 seconds.
Take a note of how far away the car is once you get to twelve.
That's the distance ahead you need to be scanning.
The faster you go, the further ahead you'll have to look to get a 12 second gap.
(....11 one thousand, 12 one thousand,- he's so far away!)
(Yep, he's quite a way away. It's about -- what have we got, 1, 2, 3
-- about 5 lamp posts roughly, so that's how far we need to be looking ahead, at least.)
Experienced drivers find scanning much easier because they can control the car and anticipate
what other drivers will do automatically -- so they've got more capacity to concentrate
on scanning the road ahead and around them.
(So, as a rule of thumb you want to be looking a minimum of sort of 4, or 5 lamp posts ahead.)
New learner drivers have to actively concentrate on handling the car,
so they don't have as much spare concentration to scan the road.
Eye tracking experiments demonstrated that inexperienced drivers tend to scan the road
only 1 to 3 seconds ahead of the car and it's only with deliberate practice and experience
that they will learn to look further ahead.
You also need to be checking in your mirrors regularly, ideally about once every 8 to 12 seconds.
The more aware you are of what's going on around your car, the safer you will be.
If most of your practice has been off-road, one of the first things you will need to work on
when you start driving on public roads is keeping the correct lane position.
Look at cars ahead of you as a guide and picture how you and your car are going to fit
as you go where they are going.
Glance at parked cars and use them to estimate the space you need for your car to go past them.
When it is time to stop picture exactly where you want you and your car to end up.
One last tip! If you're learning in a manual,
a really common thing to happen when you start driving on the road is to stall in the middle of traffic.
(That's fine, we've practiced this...)
The most important thing is not to get flustered -- don't worry about the other drivers getting impatient.
Just put your foot on the brake, clutch all the way in,
and the car in neutral, then restart the engine, then reselect first gear.
Once you've got the car restarted then you need to quickly check around you,
to see if any cars are trying to pass you while you've stalled and then pick up from where you left off.
Before you start your first few on-road driving sessions, it's a good idea to do a quick drill
to make sure you can confidently and quickly restart the engine.
The first thing is for the clutch to go back in, put the gear lever in neutral, then re-start the car.
Select your gear then checking your mirrors, pull away.
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