Killed on Driving Lesson Speculation
When I Googled “killed on driving lesson” I got about 195,000,000 results in 0.08 seconds. Driving lessons are not necessarily dangerous at all and most won’t get you killed, BUT it greatly depends on who is doing the teaching on your lesson.
The fact is that people take driving lessons because they either, can’t drive at all yet, or they are trying to improve their driving skills. So, it then follows that the person in the passenger seat should be a seasoned driver with ample experience and one who can teach the learner driver the skills required to drive. I prefer it to be a professional for the first 10-20 driving lessons, subject to the individual being trained.
It, unfortunately, is not that simple.
Very few people, including the odd driving instructors, have the knack to teach a learner driver what, as experienced driver, they technically have forgotten to do inas much as the skill has been committed to memory and is instinctual. Demonstrating what needs to be done would be much easier than limiting instruction to verbal guidance only. This would give you an idea…
Parents, siblings, friends, and specially recently licensed friends, while they mean well, sometimes are just the wrong person to teach you how to drive, for selective reasons. Family dynamics have quite an impact on a driving lesson, but mostly the danger lies in the inexperience or inadequacy of the “instructor”.
You’ve seen in movies how a guy in the control tower gets a call in from Flight XXX, from a total stranger, reporting to be a passenger taking over the plane’s controls because the pilot is incapacitated, right? The scene then builds in tension as the flight controller starts going through a list of gauges-and-buttons stuff the crisis-pilot then has to report on. This is so that the controller can familiarise himself with where the pilot is at, technically, before starting to give instructions on how to really fly the plane and successfully land it as safely as possible.
Never forget that the flight controller is miles away and can only rely on verbal instruction to assist the pilot and “talk the plane down”, as’t were.
Driving lessons are exactly like “talking a plane down” in many respects. Your driving instructor is also, technically, driving with your hands and he should also know what exactly to do in times of crisis, preferably preventing a crisis all together, by verbal instruction alone.
Can your driving instructor do that?
Can your Mom or Dad do that?
Can your friend do that?
Can your recently licensed and over-confident friend do that?
For the record: Whomever is teaching you to drive should not be more scared that you are. They should NOT be in the Kinda-Got-the-Hang-of-It category; they’ve got to be experienced drivers that know you well (or suss you easily), they’ve got to be calm, patient and empathic; they have to be super-intuitive, super-aware and excellent problem-solvers; they need to know what proprioception, praxis, target fixation and the like are, plus how and when it will affect you. They also HAVE to have either the proven knack to teach a practical skill, or they HAVE to be equipped with the knowledge and know-how to teach you to drive.
Sitting in the passenger seat, not being in charge, and not knowing how to help you in the likely event that things go wrong, is very, very dangerous in most cases.
While I’ll be speculating and don’t intend to prejudice anyone’s rights or place blame anywhere, I’ll discuss the cases in the links below to try and fathom where what went wrong in an effort to bring insight. I’m calling it like I see it.
Man killed during informal driving lesson (South Africa)
The vacant parking lot was not so vacant. While teaching someone to drive in a vacant parking lot is not an all together bad idea, it should be limited to true open air vacant areas, without pillars or such that can become an obstruction and danger.
“Then accelerated to a high speed” DOES NOT mean that the learner driver had any intention for that to happen. Having a conscious intention and what your body ends up doing is mostly poles apart when leaning to drive in the beginning. In this case, I wouldn’t be able to guess how much training she’s had before this incident, and even if she’s had quite a bit of training, what happened could still happen, regardless.
It’s called Target Fixation, and it happens to novice and experienced drivers all the time, albeit a more prevalent occurrence among learner drivers.
Here’s what I guess is what happened.
The lady drives around, cautiously, due to the damn pillars being a constant hindrance every time she needs to turn whichever way. Just before the increase in speed she could’ve made a slightly close turn at one of the pillars, been spooked by someone, or something that sent a signal to her brain saying: “Press the Brake!!!”. She attempted to do that with all her might but couldn’t find the right pedal – her feet weren’t yet instinctual in their reactions as to which pedal is which and how long it takes to move a foot to the brake pedal, if at all, anywhere.
She then realised that she’s heading for a pillar, staring at it blindly, fixated on it as she came ever closer, and by the time her body realised that she was increasing her speed, she just pressed the pedal harder and harder, the faster she was going. Her feet wouldn’t listen; body was frozen into a single course of action, clearly ineffective. That is proprioception and praxis at work. I wish you a speedy recovery lady. PLEASE get trauma counselling – it’ll help with all the “what if” questions milling through your mind. It WASN’T your fault that your body couldn’t cope – I fully understand your plight.
Teen Driver Getting Lesson From Mom Kills Boy (USA)
“The cause of the accident appeared to be driver inexperience”
“The driver was making a turn onto Martha Terrace when she lost control”
Of course the driver was inexperienced! The mother, however, was just as inexperienced at driving instruction. Who knows how many times the mother possibly said “You’re too close to the pavement”, “Watch out for this…for that”, effectively getting her daughter fixated on stuff she should’ve taken in her stride?
It is difficult to know whether the car had manual or automatic transmission – both can lead to the same result, although manual transmissions have an added factor. The driver could depress the clutch in a panic, which will speed up the car since the gears would be disengaged and resistance from the gearbox would not help keep speed in check to some degree. If the transmission was manual and the mother was in a habit of depressing the clutch around corners, that is what her child would have picked up on, long before this fateful lesson where her child really may just have mimicked her mom’s behaviour.
Either way, the main factors here are possibly speed and definitely target fixation.
Here’s what I guess happened.
The girl approached the turn at a slightly higher speed than optimal (this could be as little as 5km/h, people). As she turned the corner, the pedestrian and cyclist were right there, in her path of travel. She could have noticed them a fraction of a second too late because she was so intently focussed on the pavement at the time. Or, she could have, due to her speed, just panicked when the pedestrian and cyclist seemed to get closer sooner than she expected, and then she tried to hit the brake.
Again, trying to get your feet to respond is not too easy in the first few driving lessons – it’s almost like they have a will of their own.
Retired doctor killed by son during driving lesson (UK)
Family dynamics could have played a big role here. When Zool’s father spontaneously decided it’s time to park the car, Zool’s nerves probably went out the window, knowing that he wasn’t familiar with the car and its dynamics. I would imagine that the family car that he was used to was ” the runabout” which made it much less powerful than a Mercedes C350 and the difference in acceleration was also a separate factor.
Zool’s body was used to a smaller car where he could feel the power of the car being harnessed via the clutch – with the automatic it’s just one powerful surge all at once. The brake action is also different between any two cars. He didn’t have the opportunity to suss the new braking effectiveness, the braking power, or even the spacing of the pedals, his body probably wanting to revert to what it knew from the other car’s details.
With his dad on the outside, Zool probably succumbed to performance anxiety and with his mother and brother in the car and possibly multiple instructions from multiple sources could have contributed. With “close to 40 driving lessons in the family’s other car”, it is clear as day that Zool had a distinct nervous disposition and handling pressure still proved to be a challenge.
Boy Killed in a Driving Lesson Accident, New York Auto Accident Lawyer Comments (USA)
Here too, probably speed played a role. It is important to note that ANY speed faster than what your mind can process events, is too fast – that could be a mere 5km/h, as mentioned before. It seems clear in this case that target fixation played a definite role, following details of mounting the pavement, probably in debilitating fear of hitting the cyclist, then not being able to shift focus to another avenue and outcome.
“New York auto accident lawyer David Perecman comments on the tragic car accident, wondering why a mother would teach a 16-year old to drive in a residential neighbourhood?”. My answer: Some people just don’t have the money or patience for driving lessons. Some parents have gotten so used to driving over the years that they mistakenly believe that teaching their kids would be the same simple process their own daily driving has become.
As a general note: Please parents – this isn’t The Matrix – kids don’t just “plug-in” to driving! Your own driving judgement is a fine-honed skill…your kid DOESN’T HAVE it yet and it’s not something that can rub off from you. It’s an individual experience thing acquired over TIME!
Classmates Remember Teen Killed During Driving Lesson (USA)
Police said it was not clear why the cars collided. Alcohol was not a factor.
I can just speculate that target fixation on the part of the driver was the major cause, judging by the police comment.
Possibly the driver was running through questions like “Why is a driving school car stationery on the highway?”, “Have they run into trouble of some sort?”, “Did the driving instructor have a heart attack?”.
Take into consideration that inexperience on the part of the driver wasn’t mentioned as a role played and that, in addition to this, secondary collisions OFTEN happen at accident scenes, for instance. Just as you get the average rubber-necking to see what’s happening at the scene of an accident, which then sometimes leads to a secondary accident, just so, in this case, target fixation can never be ruled out. It really happens to EVERYONE!
Nuff said.
Please people your child’s life is more important than all the money in the world, whether that is spent on driving lessons, or not.
Drive safely now, and call an expert when things get tough, OK?
PROMISE me!!
