Phasing Out Bad Driving Habits

There are many people who believe that the driving habits you develop early on when you first learn to drive are the same driving habits that will stay with you all throughout your driving career. However, if this were the case, then the United States would be full of nothing but the best, most studious drivers!

Driving habits are like a comfortable bed; they're easy to get into and even more difficult to get out of. What complicates things further is that you can always pick up bad driving habits at any stage in your driving career. I remember being young and watching my parents drive. When I started to approach the age where I was getting ready to enroll in driver's education at my high school, I began to pay attention even more to not only how my parents were driving but to other drivers around us as well. I remember being sitting in the passenger seat in awe as I watched my father maneuver the steering wheel with just his pinky once. How was he able to control such a heavy vehicle with just one limb? When I asked him about how he was able to do this, I remember him telling me that he had bad driving habits and that I should never do what he was doing because it was dangerous. Pretty ironic thing to say when you're driving your daughter to soccer practice, huh?

When you take driver's education, depending on the type of instructor you received to teach you driving lessons, you will learn that you must always, always, always have both hands on the steering wheel at all times. Back then, they taught us about two different primary positions on the steering wheel that were most effective for driving. However, soon after I graduated from driver's education and took/passed my road test on the first try, I quickly realized that the driving hand positions were not always a good fit for different types of vehicles. It turns out that I feel more comfortable driving with both of my hands on the steering wheel in completely different spots than what I was originally taught. I also learned how to drive with no hands at all (which comes in handy when you are trying to eat) as well as how to drive with just one hand (to give your other hand a rest of course).

While these driving habits are not great, they are certainly not as bad as some other driving habits that people can develop. For instance, there are plenty of people out there who follow too closely, don't turn their headlights on when they are supposed to and who fail to signal whenever they are changing lanes or making a turn. While all of these driving habits are dangerous, the one driving habit of altering where my hands are on the steering wheel is not nearly as bad as some of the others. Still, the fact remains that in order to be as safe of a driver as possible, one really should obey the rules that have been set in place to help protect people from themselves (essentially). Remember, driving is a privilege, not a right!