Safe Speed Forums

WHY ON EARTH do we talk about gaining experience and learning to drive as two different things?

Gaining experience IS learning to drive.

I have a feeling that we can do road safety a great deal of good with this simple observation.

I'm reminded of that moment of revelation of the blindingly obvious when, as an 11 or 12 year old, I realised for the first time that a petrol pump was, in fact, a pump.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Perhaps because the basics need to be taught - and the while being taught you are "learning"; "gaining experience" however is something that is done if you are lucky with a mentor, or more typically on your own.

The way I look at learning where driving is concerned is that some people want to learn and learn more, while some will only learn enough for them to pass their test (because that is all that is required). I imagine allot of people who learn to take their test see it as just that, once having passed their test they believe it’s all that’s required, and no amount of trying to educate further will make much difference.

My thoughts are that if you’re a decent driver you end up driving to compensate for the drivers who can’t drive properly.

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

Not necessarily - particularly if we choose to ignore the lessons we should learn from that experience.


I think that we could do a lot of good if only we could pursuade people to learn from their experiences rather than travel like zombies at the speed limit. That said, I guess we won't get a wide takeup of that idea as long as government policy drums into the public that their primary responsibility is to obey the speed limit rather than drive safely.

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Will

No no! You missed the point. Gaining experience is learning - dureing the process of gaining experience the brain 'becomes familiar' with the environment. This IS learning by any definition.

Like it or not when we gain experience we ARE learning (irrespective of any desire to learn or the efficiency of the process).

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Absolutely necessarily. By definition, no less.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

And here it is in the OED:

Experience: Knowledge resulting from actual observation or practical acquaintance, or from what one has undergone.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

How many drivers have the ability to make the observations necessary to make them good drivers. If they don’t know what to look for while driving and are not interested in looking, then they won’t advance into better drivers. The old saying "some people never learn".

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

Means that some learn less effectively than others. It isn't literally true. If it was they couldn't walk or talk (for a start).

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

And here is the full text from the Pocket Oxford Dictionary:
So all that is necessary to gain driving experience is to participate in the act of driving. You don't have to learn anything new - merely practise that which you already know.

To get maximum benefit from that experience, we need people to apply that experience as in definition 2 rather than merely to participate as in defintions 1 and 3.

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Will

That's true but maybe their brain is only capable of taking them to that point, after that their brain dosn't develope enougth to abvance them any further.

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

And we're right into Safe Speed territory. The quality of our drivers is defined by the efficiency of their experience. Modern policy is undermining that efficiency.

I doubt that it is possible to drive without learning from the process, but clearly the rate of learning is highly variable.

We do know that average crash rates fall by a factor of at least 10 as new drivers transition to being experienced drivers.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I don't suppose a non-learning person could ever pass a driving test.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

OK Paul just as an example, I’m sure you remember the article about the lady who took her test (was it 52 times?) before she passed. Even after she passed her test I would have my doubts that she would ever make a better driver from any further experiene, as such she would always be a liability to other road users.

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

Yep! We really do need drivers to learn from their experiences and telling people that their primary responsiblity is to obey the speed limit is most certainly not helping.

I doubt that it is possible to drive (or to do most things) without gaining some conditioning - but that's more like muscle-memory than intelligent application of that experience! Unfortunately, with the wrong messages being rammed down drivers' throats, there is a danger that they become conditioned to obey the speed limit but not to drive safely.

My theory is that this is because cognitive recoding gives drivers more time for things other than the mechanics. By the time they've passed their test, they should already have recoded things like changing from second to third into a single step - but that process continues long after you've passed the test. That said, there is a law of diminishing returns at work. When drivers get to the stage where they feel completely comfortable with their abilities, there is a danger they'll stop learning and switch off. This is where we need to step in with things like advanced training, "check rides", etc. to keep drivers thinking about and learning from their experience.

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Will

So the holy grail must be to get drivers to gain the maximum experience in the minimum time.

I see this bit differently. It's well known that we make huge gains in hazard perception with growing experience. I say the main safety skills are:

- Observation (especially visual search)
- Concentration (learning NEVER to let your attention drift for too long)
- Anticipation (recognising the patterns of behaviour of others)
- Hazard perception (risk recognition and risk assessment)
- Hazard response (risk mitigation)
- Risk avoidance (tied to anticipation)

I'd suggest that we could only call ourselves 'experienced' when most of this lot are tucked away in the subconscious and effectively automated.

Taken as a whole, I'd say that experienced drivers have a well developed subconscous 'risk management system' that is NEVER present in new drivers.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

'cos if I said you were a learner driver you would take it as a personal attack and give me a final warning

Personally I'd take it as a compliment.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Yes, that and to make sure that the acqusition of experience doesn't 'top out'.

This sort of chart would appear to apply:

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety