You are listening to the Driving Confidence Podcast for drivers who want to be calm and confident on the road. We will be sharing tips, stories, and advice to beat driving nerves and anxiety and build your driving confidence whether you are just starting out as a learner or have had your driving license for years. If you want to transform how you've. Feel about driving this podcast is for you.

So the goals for driver education, are basically a collection of, suggestions put forward by some academics about 20 years ago, for elements which should be included in the GDE. in a driver education syllabus. So if you think about things like, which the, the kind of general public are probably most aware of in driving, they'll probably think of, you know, knowledge of the highway code. They'll think of, you know, their ability to reverse park, bay park, turn on the road, all these kind of things. the goals for driver education kind of lays these things out with knowledge and skills at the bottom, bottom levels of the matrix. but then it goes on to expand on these requirements higher up in the matrix And it talks about things like, you know, the ability to self reflect. It talks about, knowledge and understanding of risk increasing factors. And it continues to go all the way up to discuss elements like, you know, your, your values as a person, your social circles, your style of driving and what motivates you to drive in a certain way. Does that sound okay?

In a nutshell, great, brilliant.

Okay. End of podcast. End of podcast. Yeah

the shortest podcast we've So if he was thinking of someone that's a driver already, rather than a learner driver, let's talk about someone that's passed their test. How does this relate to them and what, how could they use this? Thanks.

So if you, if you're an experienced driver already, the chances are that you think, You're a very good driver. And we know this. We know this because there's research out there that, you know, if it asks a certain number of people in a survey to rate themselves, whether they are below average or above average as a driver, 80 percent of people rate themselves as above average, which just does not work. It doesn't, that does not compute. so that kind of self confidence. sometimes referred to as, you know, kind of superiority bias, a bias in your ability to, for example, get yourself out trouble. If something happens on the road ahead, I believe that you have extremely quick reaction times. That means that even if you are driving faster than the speed limit, your, your skill level as a driver, your, your age, perhaps means you have younger reactions. If you believe all this, then that's, that's, that's, that could be an issue. Potentially that could be an issue because bias, these kind of biases make us think we are better than we are and they lead us to take more risks. So guess the first way that you could think about the GDE matrix in terms of that way is to have a think about yourself and be really honest with yourself. So in the goals for driver education, there's a section that talks about self assessment. and that's about, you know, really reflecting on, for example, if you have a near miss. We used to call these the whoa moments, um, with our learner drivers. And everyone has had whoa moments at some point in their driving career. And it's, you know, slight tangent, but as a driving instructor, we used to explain these kind of things to learner drivers in terms of if you go, if you're driving on a country road and you go around a bend too fast and you have that, whoa, one of the major things that we'd be trying to teach is, okay, what happened there? Let's have a think about what I was doing going into that bend that caused me to have that whoa moment. And if a young driver has the skills to reflect on that effectively, then they'll be less likely to go into that bend too quickly. Again, they would, they would get better, they would read the road better the next time, they would slow down on the approach. Whereas if a young driver does not have those skills of reflection, then chances are they will keep going into bends too quickly. They will continue not to plan ahead and eventually, worst case scenario, they are more likely to crash. To think about that the other way, if a young driver goes round a bend too quickly, and ends up in a field, or worse, the chances are they, that's not the first time they've gone round a bend too quickly. It has happened previously. They've just not had those skills of self assessment. So what does that mean for an experienced driver? well, one of the issues with biases is that, in terms of driving, that these serious collisions are very rare. So every time you go for a drive and you're not involved in an accident, you're actually confirming your own bias. That you are a good driver and that you are, you do have superior skills, even if you're not reflecting on the, on, on the dodgy moments. so as an experienced driver, if you can build on these self reflection things on, just be aware, aware of the fact that, you're maybe not at the moment, the best judge of your own skill level. That even that in itself is just a huge, can be a huge help.

Thank you for listening. Find out about the different ways that you can work with us on our website, www.confidentdrivers.co.uk, and begin to transform the way you feel about driving.