In this episode, we wanted to talk to you about the role of detective work in your driving. But before we do that, Kev, the start of season three. Yeah. Excited as ever, a few plans and yeah, looking forward to this episode because it's something I do quite a lot in the car, so I'm interested to have a chat about it. And then also to hear back from people afterwards about what they think. Yeah. And as always, we look at things from completely different points of view. Yes, as always as always. We generally comes together in the end. But to start off with, we tend to start on different tracks. So when I started talking about detective work, I was talking about something completely different to you. Yeah. I suppose that boils down to the fact that because I do this, while I'm driving and I get my students to do this. Whether that's learner drivers or even PDI's, which is people becoming driving instructors. It is something that I really believe in and something I think we do subconsciously what I mean by that is something that we do. Even if you was walking, you would still do this. But bringing it into a driving context now. And I suppose that's where I was going with this, which is slightly different to how you were thinking about being a detective work ed Yeah, because I'm not a driving instructor. So. When we talked about it, I'm like, yes, I do this as a driver. But the way I was thinking about detective work was much more from a confidence point of view. And I was thinking much more about the people that we work with on a one-to-one basis. And what we teach in our ADI training courses. So when we talked about our different views on detective work and our different takes on detective work, we decided that yeah. That would be a great episode to talk about both aspects of detective work and that be a great start to the season. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I'll kick it off with, I You know, like I've said previously, this is ongoing. It never stops. It never stops even. You know, up until your test and then you carry on. If you've been driving 40 or 50 years, you are still doing or still been a detective. And hazard perception. This is what this is all about. It's about being a detective. What can you see and part of that hazard perception is while you're driving as well. I have so many students that pass the theory. But then they don't realize that it's ongoing into their driving. So, what I try to do is. is look at, what are we trying not to do, while we're driving. And the answers I get back as well are I'm trying not to slam the brakes on. I'm trying not to, stop at junctions if it's clear to go these sorts of things is what we're trying to do, but how do we actually do that? And trying to get people to start thinking about what they really want rather than what they don't want to drive. And I think this is where the detective work comes in. So let's go back to basics here. What do we actually mean? About being a detective when you're driving and we're asking somebody to be a detective. What are we asking them to do? Well, this is where I ask three questions to people, you know, while they're driving? And I try and ask these questions in this order. The first one is what can you see? And I think that's a great question to start with, because one, I now understand where they're looking. And two, it gets people to actually look and we can build on this through their answers and what they're giving me. And then once we built on what they can see might be a junction. Might be parked cars, might be a lorry coming towards them. We can then say what might happen. And again, answers are different? Everyone's different with different situations. So you're going to get different answers. And then once you've decided, what you can see and what might happen. The third and final and probably most important question is what are you going to do? So we know what's happening and what we can see, how are we going to deal with that situation? Because you've then done the detective work. You've looked for the clues. You've looked for the clues. You've looked for the clues that then might say this might happen. Yeah. Because I've seen the clues. I've seen there's a junction, that's covered by a van parked close to it. So I might not see a car coming out. So what would you do approaching that junction? You'd probably slow down a little bit. Be aware that something might come out. And most of the time, because you're being aware. What's happened is you're now, being prepared for something to happen. And we don't have to do that emergency stop. So you're feeling better. You're feeling more prepared. But then it doesn't just stop You carry this process on, and on, and Yeah. And you mentioned really early on hazard perception, that's all about detective work. Isn't it. It's looking for clues to work out what might happen. When you're practicing hazard perception for your theory. What you're also doing is you're just looking at a screen. So you've taken away the actual driving aspect. So it makes it easier just to concentrate on what might happen. what you can see what might happen. But what you don't have to do on hazard perception is what am I going to do? Yeah, this is where now this comes into your driving. What am I going to do? This might happen. So I need to do this because I don't want this to happen So you're thinking about what do I do want? Yeah. And we've heard a talk about hazard prediction as well, as opposed to, hazard perception, which we won't go into too much in this episode. But it's the same thing hazard prediction. It's looking at the clues and working out what might happen. Yeah, exactly. In its simplest form. That's exactly what it is. Thinking about it, we do do this all the time as experienced drivers. I, and I often talk about the body language of the car driving in front, now obviously cars don't actually have body language, but there is, you do get a feel for the behavior of a car in front, there's a particular roundabout near us that so many people get wrong, they get the lanes wrong. But you can see it happening because of the signs that the car in front or the car by the side of you is giving off. You sort of know, that's detective work. It is. And then your intuition is kicking in, isn't it? Yeah. You know, and that's again, you know, you're taking it to a different level. Where you're seeing a car. His body language of his car. It's telling you. Do you know what, I don't think he's going to be turning left here. I think he's going to be going straight on You know, there's, there's something about it, but intuition is kicking in and it's not. Do you know what I'm going to hold back. I'm just going to wait for that situation to develop, but you've done no clues. You know, what can you see? I can see this car is telling me something. What might happen? He might carry straight on. So, what am I going to do? I'm just going to hold back. Let the situation develop in front So that I can then deal with it safely. Yeah, I'm feeling a need to talk about my spidey senses tingling. I should have called this something related to Spiderman instead of, instead of. being a Detective. But this is, this is where its all linked in there's lots of overlaps. Yes. We're talking about being a detective and hazard perception. But that we've also started to bring in intuition. Yeah. Which again is, is driving as well. And we do intuition. Every day of our life. Not just in driving Like you just said. So, yeah. Yeah. And I'm thinking again about learners here and thinking about what happens when you're first learning to drive. And there's a thing called cognitive overload, where actually you're trying to learn so many new things, so many new skills. Something like this intuition and spotting, those clues of looking ahead and what, what might happen? That's really difficult when you're first a learner. Because there's so much to take on board. Yeah. And this is where, we, we take step by step. We taken a little step. The first step is getting used to the car. This step of the hazard perception and being a detective. Is it's when we've got the skills of driving. The basic skills of driving we've got. But what we're doing now is we're adding things in, we're looking further outside the car. You're looking at other people we're looking at. Other street furniture. What does that mean? How's it going to affect us? And again, what happens when I start bringing this in peoples natural tendency is to start slowing down. Once I start asking these questions and people start to think about what's happening or what they can see. What might happen and what they're going to do, their speed almost halves. These are the really important skills that you need to lead to that independent driving that we keep talking about. If you want to be able to make your own driving decisions and drive independently, these detective skills are the ones that you're going to need, Exactly that. say someone is struggling with a busy roundabout. It might be that they haven't got the technical knowledge of how to deal with a roundabout. Yeah. It feels that they don't understand where people are going on a roundabout, bring it back. Bringing your skills back so you can start practicing maybe on a quieter roundabout, and then move it forward again, asking yourself the same questions. It just, again, little steps, more practice. Enables you to then to bring those skills further forward into more challenging situations. Yeah and nailing your skills so that then you can look at the wider environment taking all of the information that's available to you. And make your decisions. But I think, we've said about going back, but I think this could also, or is also, should I say, right back to the beginning of how do you feel before you get in a car? Yeah. So you'll. You know, you are being a detective on yourself. And just by asking yourself. How am I feeling?. Might be okay I'm not feeling a hundred percent. So what I'll do is I'll make sure I'm more aware. Make sure I just take my time a little bit, just to get the knowledge right. I know a bit tired. So what I'm going to do is this. And, you know, just being that detective on yourself your own emotions. And emotions play a massive part of driving. And how we can manage our emotions can affect the way we drive. So I think, Being a detective of ourself. In the first instance. Is, a skill that can lead to you being a detective on the road there's two questions there isn't there. This. There's the, how am I feeling followed by how's that going to affect my driving. Yeah, definitely. And I think that's what we need to do as drivers. I remember doing a course before. We told a story about someone planning a drive. But it was for the next day. But they ended up getting a taxi. So they took the pressure out of that driver because they knew they would feel in a certain way while they were driving. So their emotions, I know we're going off track slightly. But it's that first choice before you get in the car. What do I do? So there's lots of ways of playing detective. And while we're talking about your own emotions and how that affects your driving that struck me, that, that links back into that episode that we had with Matt, from Marmalade, where we were talking about other people's behavior sort of people driving behind you driving too close. Overtaking you. Being aggressive. So there's some detective work there as well isn't there on what might be going on in the other person's life in the other person's day in the other person's emotions. The thought there is that we don't know, unless we get out and actually ask the person. We don't know. But what we can do as drivers I feel is ask ourselves those three questions again. What can you see? I can see A driver behind me that's really close. What might happen? He might go into the back of me, he might want to overtake. Okay, so what are we going to do? And at the same time. I don't know, we tend to judge really quickly. don't we So if somebody is driving really close behind us, Or if somebody beeps. Or if somebody overtakes us. We sort of tend to be really quick to judge them in the negative. But actually, like you saying we don't know the whole story. We don't know what's going on for them that day. Maybe there is an emergency. Most of the time I'm sure there's not, but. Maybe just holding judgment a little bit. And so that recognizing that's going on for them. I can't control what's happening for them, but I'm going to do my detective work, work out what might happen, what I'm going to do. And being in control of my emotions. And remember how that might affect my driving. 100% and that in turn builds your confidence. Because the more you deal with those situations. Hopefully you don't have to deal with them too many times. But the more you have dealt with those situations or asked yourself those questions. It is in the memory bank. Isn't it? Yeah. And you can refer back to. The last time I did this and that had a good result. Yeah, so I'll do the same again. And it's sort of about having a plan. Yeah. Instead of reacting, you've sort of got a planned way that you would like to behave. If you react to something. Rather than respond. Or plan for a situation. You're going to have a worst outcome. What you want to be doing is planning or responding to those situations. So the outcome is better for you. Have we covered all of detective work and general driving. Do you think? What I would say for people to do now is if you're listening to this podcast, Is ask yourself when you're driving those three questions. What can I see? What might happen? What am I going and see how that affects your driving and the situations develop. That's the biggest take away for me from this podcast is get people to do that, just to see what they notice. And I'd love to hear, what you found out, so get back to me. Definitely. So if you're a detective. You're looking for clues. You're asking questions. And you're working on the answers. Another way to do it as you don't necessarily have to drive, you can ask the question to your driver. So if you're sitting in the passenger seat with mum or dad or whoever's there driving? Ask them three questions and see what answers you get back. Yeah. Cool. So when we started talking about detective work I was thinking about something completely different. I was thinking about those people who've come to us for some help one-to-one. Yeah. And the reason I thought of that was because that's where we start. Every single person who comes to us is unique. They all have their own unique set of experiences and circumstances. That have led to them, struggling with driving confidence and coming to us for help And so, because everybody's unique and because there is no one size fits all solution. The very first thing we do is play detective. And we ask them a whole series of questions in order to try and unravel a little bit and try to get a feeling for what their experience is and what's actually going on for them. Yeah. Because everyone's individual as an instructor, that's really important for us to, to know. Because otherwise we might be. Assuming and going down the wrong path. When somebody wants some help with their driving confidence and they come to us. The very first thing that we do is ask them a whole load of questions. And we don't actually talk to the person until we got that background information, because until we can find out what's going on for them What their experiences are. Were not able to make recommendations on the best way forward for them, because what might work for one person. Isn't necessarily going to work for someone else. We don't believe in a one size fits all solution. So we play detective. Looking for clues asking questions. And analyzing the answers to really customize an approach for them. Also. When I'm asking the questions, if they have the person starts to think about it and they go. I hadn't thought of that Yeah, it Yeah, they have their own light bulb moments. Just in, answering our questions. I didn't see it that way. Yeah. Yes. So, the sorts of questions that we're asking. are what are their driving experiences? What sort of things have happened to them whats their driving story. And. Also asking them, what are their thoughts? So what are the recurring thoughts that come up again and again and again, because actually to build your driving confidence. That's what you need to tackle. You need to work on changing those thoughts because otherwise they're going to constantly undermine you all the time. If you struggle with your driving confidence, there's a real benefit in taking some time to reflect on what are my thoughts. What are my beliefs that are holding me back. What are my worries and what is my driving story and see if you can spot. Any patterns. See if you can spot anything in there that might give you a few light bulb moments, because then you can get an idea of where to start to get building your confidence. Yeah, and I think that's a great point is just too, reflect on what you've done previously. You know, what was your thinking at the time? What were you feeling? Your thoughts and your feelings are really important. This stage is just to find out those thoughts and feelings that affect your behavior. And then like Tracey said is, Are there any reoccurring. Habits almost. That you've set yourself almost because they, the more you do it. They become a habit don't they. And you're reinforcing them every time you have that negative thought. You're reinforcing it. So you need to find out what that negative thought is so that you can start undoing it start undoing it and change it to a more positive. Yeah. So, what do you think, do you play detective when you're driving? Have you played detective on your own thoughts and experiences around driving? Let us know if that concept, if that idea of playing detective resonates with you at all. Or, let us know some of your stories of times when you've just had those spidey senses tingling and you've realized that you've picked something up intuitively if you'd like to get in touch with us, then all of our contact details are in the show notes as always. Share our podcast with anybody else that you think might find it helpful. One of the ways you can do that is by leaving us a review to make it easier for people to find the podcast. and until next time, have a great day. Whatever you doing.