Practice Makes Perfect....

I passed!  Yesterday, after some months of preparation and hundreds of miles of driving, I passed the Institute of Advanced Motorists Road Smart (IAM RoadSmart) advanced drivers test.  I even got a first!

Aside from being well chuffed at this, the whole experience has been quite enlightening from the viewpoint of training, trainers and being trained.

What is quite clear is that motivation is above all important.  I opted to do this, I wanted to do it, and I was prepared to put time and effort  into doing it. Although I may be able to get a discount on car insurance, this wasn't my reason for preparing and doing the test. My motivation was that after driving for over sixty years, it wasn't a bad idea to give some serious thought, time and activity to improving my driving, having reached an age when deterioration is, alas, inevitable.

Driving is a peculiarly personal activity, about which people (especially men) are very sensitive. I soon learned that I had a number of habits which needed to be abandoned or improved, starting with handling the steering wheel (two hands at all times) and going on to reading the road, anticipating by looking well ahead (Eyes on Main Beam to use the jargon) and generally pre-acting rather than reacting.  Much stress was put on driving lawfully (i.e. Not breaking speed limits) and safely, but 'with spirit' (i.e. If it's safe to do so, driving at the speed limit, but not beyond it).  Importantly, from the viewpoint of learning, I had to be prepared to take feedback and advice, and apply it. This, according to my Observer, is not what some trainees are prepare to do ("I always drive this way, so....")

There is a certain amount of jargon and acronyms: POWDERY and IPSGA, for instance. The latter relates to on the road behaviour: taking in, processing and giving out Information, Positioning the vehicle, Speed, Gears and Acceleration.  And so on. The idea is that all of this stuff will become an automatic part of one's driving.

And therein lies the rub: converting the explicit to the implicit. As this almost invariably involves some measure of changing ingrained habits, doing so is really challenging, and involves a lot of self awareness, self observation and analysis over quite a long time. There's a big lesson there for training: don't expect people to change habits overnight and encourage self criticism, but not to the extend of demoralizing the trainee.

The role of feedback is also very important. My Observer (they're not called trainers) is very good eliciting evaluation of performance from me before offering feedback.  She's also good at giving feedback while I'm driving; in other words, feedback during performance rather than afterwards.  This provides an opportunity to alter behaviour during a training session and receiving feedback (and encouragement) when it improves.

Practice is also very important.  I don't actually do much driving these days, so I made time to do some longish drives along a variety of road types in order to put lessons into practice.  This demonstrated very clearly that without practice, old habits and new skills won't quickly change or become habitual.  This is an obvious lesson which applies to virtually everything.

In my last session before the test, my observer did a demonstration drive (she'd done one or two at the start of my sessions) which proved very helpful.  So, there's a role for modeling target behaviour -- and commenting on and explaining it.

Lastly, an important part of the training is doing a commentary on driving while driving.  My Observer suggested that it's useful to think you're talking to a passenger who can't see, i.e you have a make believe interlocutor.  The test includes doing a commentary, and I think it helped me as it shows the tester not only what you're doing, but clarifies why you're doing it. It also demonstrates your powers of observation(the I part of IPSGA) and what you're making of what you observe as far as decisions re your driving are concerned.

I wish I'd done this test years ago, not only because of its effects on my driving, but because of the insights it has provided for training. My conclusion is that it's a good thing for anyone involved in training to become a trainee from time to time (it doesn't have to be driving!) so as to be reminded of what is involved in training from the trainee's viewpoint. It really is quite illuminating!