Once I turned seventeen, it felt like there was an expectation to learn how to drive. In fact, some job applications even add requirements that those applying are required, or prefer those applying to have a full UK drivers licence, and on some applications, access to a car. If we put to one side how expensive driving lessons have been in the past, and how much more expensive they are getting, there is another aspect of driving that can go unnoticed and doesn’t affect everyone. Driving anxiety. Driving requires an awareness of everything going on around you, inside and outside of the vehicle you’re learning to drive
in.
“…there is another aspect of driving that can go
unnoticed and doesn’t affect everyone. Driving
anxiety.”
The first time I had lessons, I was seventeen and not confident with driving. I struggled to deal with the pressure of when the driving environment required quick reactions, such as quickly setting off when there was a gap at a roundabout. My instructor that time said “you missed it” over and over before I finally managed to go, slipping up the curb in panic before continuing to head on home.
“Any confidence I had in driving, and any desire to learn
to drive was ruined by my anxiety…”
The next time I had a lesson, I cried getting into the passenger seat so the lesson was cancelled, and so were the rest with that instructor. Any confidence I had in driving, and any desire to learn to drive was ruined by my anxiety that got worse after that lesson at the roundabout.
Any time driving lessons were brought up again, I avoided the subject, terrified.
It took until the summer before heading to university to start driving lessons again. I had trouble trying to find an instructor willing to call back after my driving anxiety and experience last time was explained to them. That time though, the new instructor helped a lot, especially when I was trying to drive through busy situations like the city centre where pedestrians would glare at you if you tried to drive because they were wanting to walk out into the road without looking. However, heading to university in another city that September meant I had to stop those lessons, and then half-way through my first year of
university, there was the COVID-19 outbreak.
“I had trouble trying to find an instructor willing to call
back after my driving anxiety was explained to them.”
I’m now twenty-one, graduated, and have been struggling to find an instructor due to the pandemic creating a backlog of people wanting driving lessons and driving tests. However, my driving anxiety has been drowned out by something else. The stress of trying to find a job or sort out my life without being able to drive yet, in a society that feels like it expects people to drive (and have access to a car), regardless of how expensive cars, fuel and driving lessons are and how much the prices continue to go up.
I’m hopeful that I won’t experience driving anxiety as intensely as I have in the past, but I still remember how the panic that sets in and everything you have been taught goes out of the window. Where you forget how to get the car to move, your heart racing and your hands clamming up with sweat on the steering wheel, trying to remember the steps in order and which pedals your feet need to be on or hover over.
“I hope things will be different this time.”
Anxiety resources for England
• Anxiety UK www.anxietyuk.org.uk
• Mind www.mind.org.uk
• NHS https:/www.nhs.uk/every-mind-matters/mental-health-issues/anxiety/
York Ending Stigma
To find out more about our work and to join us to end mental health stigma in York, please refer to our website https://yorkcvs.org.uk/york-ending-stigma/ or email us on yes@yorkCVS.org.uk