Styles of driving

I have been helping my younger daughter's friend learn to drive to have enough confidence. So, I have been trying to take her places where she could have a challenge while still increasing her driving skills. It makes me also think about driving more.

For example, at first when you are learning to drive you are just trying to stay alive and keep everyone else alive on the road with you. As you get better you can take your skills up to higher speeds on the freeways. Even though freeways are likely 6 times safer than driving on side streets with signals and stop signs and more road hazards and people walking around, just remember on the freeways you still have to worry about things happening really fast above around 55 to 60 miles per hour. So, the faster you go the more you have to look out further in front of you so you don't over steer the vehicle which means taking to big of corrections to your direction at higher speeds. You have to make smaller and smaller corrections with the steering wheel the faster you go on the freeway so you can stay on the road and not crash and still be safe. Also, the more expensive the car the safer it tends to be a higher and higher speeds. So, when you first get into a car if the speedometer goes up to 140 or 150 or beyond miles per hour, then you know that the vehicle is very well built for high speed travel generally speaking. But, if the top speed of your speedometer is about 70 or  90 you really never should exceed that speed under any circumstances, because it isn't built for going faster than that.

So, a part of this is in the design of the vehicle which might be designed for cornering at high speeds and some might just be designed for maximum mileage which might mean you need to drive those vehicles slower.

So, some of the styles of driving are:

New driver: just trying to learn and stay alive and keep other people alive

having driven 1 or 2 years: which sometimes is an okay driver and sometimes is an overconfident driver.

Defensive driver: As you drive more and more and deal with more and more road hazards and bad drivers, you start to look for more road hazards and bad drivers and try to steer clear of them more. For example, if you see a bad or drunk or drugged driver, you usually don't want to be behind someone like that. And if you are in front of someone like this you want to be WAY in front so you aren't killed along with anyone in your vehicle. Becoming an effective defensive driver generally will prevent most or all accidents you might potentially be in.

Aggressive driver: I have always been a more aggressive driver like my father and grandfather and uncles, aunts and cousins. For me, the psychology is "I would rather not fall asleep at the wheel and I don't anyone else to either" So, an aggressive driver wants to not fall asleep driving or be muddled and bored in their thoughts and doesn't want anyone else to be muddled or bored in their thoughts either. So, it is a style that keeps everyone awake and everyone consequentially alive.

I find generally speaking if you have the reflexes and senses for this it will keep you alive the best in the long run by keeping both you and other drivers awake and focused on driving. But, it must be remembered that everyone in my family on my Dad's side is extremely aggressive and focused and extremely coordinated so this works for them. So, maybe it might be best to say this is my father's families style of driving. It's a way to get things done quickly and to stay alive and keep everyone else alive too.

However, you have to do what works for you. For example, some people can't have the  radio or music on and be able to concentrate properly on driving. But, after 1 or 2 years of driving I found I could do multiple things at once. However, things like texting will tend to screw up all drivers for a bunch of reasons eventually. So, if you are going to type your texts or read your texts you should just stop and do that and not try to do this while driving.

Hopefully all this will be helpful to you.