Aspies For Freedom

Driving was difficult for me to learn as well.  To pass my test I had to have quite a lot of lessons and then I had an old bomb car that I drove around the back streets with on my Learners.  Mind you, I had already driven in the learners car quite a bit before driving around the back streets.  But I needed to drive by myself to get it... without the distraction of someone else beside me.

Maybe you could try driving an automatic first?  It doesn't give you quite as much to think about.

I reasoned when I was still at school that if I didn't learn to drive then, I would not have the time or energy when I was older.

There was absolutely no way I could learn to drive with my father - he had taught me the basics in a field, but is WAY too fond of his car to let me drive it on the road! My mother has never driven.

So I got a Saturday job to pay for lessons. I had 24 of them before I was ready - and then passed at the first attempt.

I then couldn't afford a car for a few years, so I had another couple of lessons before I bought one.

Driving was extremely easy for me once I got the hang of it (I nearly had a meltdown on my first lesson, though). I still consider myself to be an excellent driver, and I attribute this mainly to being able to memorize all the rules, having above-average visuo-spatial abilities, and playing tons of racing video games growing up.

Some people would even go far as to call me an "aggressive driver", which I object to - I don't intentionally piss people off by weaving in and out of lanes, honking, tailgating, etc. I do, however, consider myself to be a "dominant driver", meaning that I actually know what I'm doing on the road  and I don't take *** from people (I don't let people cut me off or violate my right-of-way and stuff like that). I've never lost my temper while driving, and that seems to make the angry people even angrier (which is funny).

Remember when you're driving

This pair of Golden Rules:

Faster cars are "Idiots!!!!"

And slower cars are "Fools!!!"

©Me!

aspie85 - There's another thread on driving problems that also might be helpful to you - http://www.aspiesforfreedom.com/showthre...216&page=1

Learning to drive was very difficult for me.  I had private lessons and extra lessons.  My family members did not like to take me out to practice and thought I was a terrible driver.  The teacher was amazed I passed the test the first time.  After I got my license my parents would not let me borrow their car.  A few years later I bought a car because of work.  I just drove around back streets at first.  

I sometimes have to turn off the radio and ask people not to talk to me when I am driving and need to concentrate on making turns, finding streets or changing lanes.  Driving in heavy highway traffic or downtown is very tiring because so much is going on.  I sometimes try to avoid left turns (right hand drive) by making a series of right turns if possible.  I also have some trouble judging distances but there are tricks to it:  using stationary objects such as lamp posts, estimating stopping time for yellow lights before coming to an intersection, using the car in front as a guide to keeping in the lanes.  I have trouble parallel parking but I was able to do it well enough to pass the driving test.  

I like driving.  It is a freedom but expensive.  I would rather have a bicycle.  I hope my husband will let me have one soon.

LOL Tigger, that is what they tell the students in racing school.

I passed my test a few months ago.

I've had a few lessons over the years, but never got round to taking my test.  But then I moved to a country that doesn't really have much public transport, so I was reliant on taxis.

I had 16 lessons and passed first go.  I bought my first car and I'm loving driving.  I love the freedom.  I wish I'd done it years ago.

I don't have any Aspie related problems with driving.

I'm not very good at visualising distances, i.e. if someone says their house or a store is 8 miles away, I can't think how far that is, how long it would take to get there...  I'm okay with close spacial awareness, as in parking and stuff.

One other slight problem, but it's no biggy, is that when I was having driving lessons and the instructor told me to turn left or right, I had a bad habit of looking away from the road to my hands to see which one I write with (that's my right hand!).  It's not a problem if I'm going about my every day driving, but I guess if I give a lift to someone else and they are giving me directions...

One note of caution though:  For people in UK who are considering whether or not to get a formal diagnosis, I think it's been mentioned before, AS is supposed to be a condition that's declared to the DVLC.  This *might* impact on insurance premiums, if you declare any disability, you usually have to pay much higher premiums.  It's worth bearing this in mind if you're thinking about getting a formal diagnosis.

(Where I am at the moment, the insurance system is different, it's based on a percentage of the value of the car, it's not loaded the way it is in UK, and they never asked me to declare anything, I think they assume that if you've passed your driving test you're fit to drive.)

I think I will start walking to church and stuff.  I told my psychotherapist my car is primarily an excuse to get lazy and fat.

The book Divorce Your Car!  by Katie Alvord suggests you take a map and a compass and draw a circle of two miles radius around your residence.

Inside that circle for me is:
1.  My job
2.  Across the street from the office, a shopping center with a Giant, a Gold's Gym, my bank, the vet, Blockbuster
3.  Mt. Vernon Baptist Church
4.  Reagan National Airport
5.  Potomac Yard strip mall (a stretch, but Subway, Shopper's Food Warehouse, Target, Best Buy, Staples, Regal Cinema, some restaurants)
6.  A little shopping center with HR Block, CVS, Subway, an organic market that will recycle your alkaline batteries and compact florescent bulbs
7.  Voting place/community center (another stretch) and library
8.  laundromat, dollar store, barber, high-priced grocery store, pizza place, Chinese restaurant between apartment and office

Not quite
* the nearest subway station

I don't really like exercise but I do believe like Pres. Clinton in alternative energy and in using the cellulite you already have as transportation fuel.

And in importing less oil from places with angry Muslims.

Yeah, I think you certainly could walk to and from many of those places. It would only be if it were raining and/or you needed to transport lots of stuff eg. groceries, that you'd really need to use the car. Then again, cars need a good "run" in order to avoid the battery going flat. A sensible compromise seems the best solution.

Probably.  The Scots, English, (tidewater near the ocean) Scots-Irish (Appalachia in the mountains) settled this region hundreds of years ago.

Also, I firmly believe that competition for oil is only going to intensify, and the problem with oil is not that we will run out, but that we cannot jack up the flow rate to coincide with demand.  We will keep drilling and getting a trickle for some centuries, but not nearly enough.  We can't run a world economy on a trickle.  That is the problem.  We might as well be running out.  That is the problem.

So we have the strong navy but China is on the same continent as Saudi Arabia and it could have a mighty army, and for that matter, India, and Russia too.  If you remember your 1960s propaganda movies, the Chinese even had their nuclear war films in which they had troops ready to fight even in nuclear fallout conditions with horses and men wearing gas masks.  Their philosophy is human waves vs. atom bombs.

We're going to have to learn to share............. and do our share.  Start walking America.... you'll win, and you'll a big loser too.

Here is the link from the US Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration that gives the figures for the Top 15 Countries in Crude Oil and Total Petroleum Imports. The top nation in both crude oil and total petroleum imports is not Saudi Arabia, but rather Canada. In other words, the majority of the oil being used in the United States is Canadian oil.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petro...mport.html

Then why are Canadians paying so much for gasoline?

It could be taxes, like it is in Europe.