Different things to gain an intuition for:
- Getting used to being in the driver's seat. Getting used to where everything is. Especially the turn signals (shoutout to my fellow BMW drivers).
- Getting used to acceleration, braking, holding your speed, steering, and turn signals.
- Getting used to the size of your car, it's outer edges, turning radius.
- Getting used to going in reverse.
- Driving in the neighborhoods vs. driving on the highway.
- Constantly being aware of all moving objects around you.
Do lots of driving. Check your mirrors all the time, even if you're not planning to change lanes. Keep enough distance from the person in front of you that you'll be able to react in time to anything they do. Use your turn signals - be as predictable as you can.
Driving on public roads is more like dancing in a group than racing. Going where you want, slowing down and speeding up - all need to be done in concert with everyone else on the dance floor in order avoid collisions.
With practice, driving will feel as natural as walking or running.
"Be as predictable as you can, but assume everyone is trying to kill you."
I think best to me is to assume other drivers are not paying a lot of attention unless there are obvious hints that they are and if you don't have visibility somewhere, assume that something could be there.
Well, that's just absurd.
I think this is the biggest one, and it really matters: why is a person learning at 40? Was it random circumstances or have they been avoiding something that seems too challenging? In the latter case, they may have self-selected out of the driving pool for a reason that needs to be addressed carefully.
Have they spent 40 years riding in cars and developing situational awareness of traffic as a passive observer? Or do they treat car rides like an abstract teleporter, where they barely notice what happened from start to finish?
Or, do they have some anxiety or phobia about it? Kids tend to be more plastic and adaptive, as well as somewhat risk-blind. So they can usually get through that quickly. An adult may have more challenge overcoming the fear in order to function properly as a driver. It's not very safe or responsible to do this through solo practice, since being overly anxious can really interfere with the cognitive process you need in complex traffic.
1. 90% of driving is predicting what the other drivers will do. Luckily most of them will follow the rules of the road, so you don't have to worry about those. You need to worry about the outliers. The driving part will become pretty automatic, it's the situational awareness that is most important.
2. There is only ever at most one person in front, one person in the back, and one person to each side. Those are the ones you need to worry about most. But you also need to know who will become those people soon, so make sure you look ahead and not at the road in front of you. And make sure you check your mirrors once in a while. When I was learning to drive, my dad would randomly quiz me, "is there a car to your left right now?" And I had to know without looking. Because in an emergency you need to already know which ways are clear.
But if you master these two things, you will be a better driver than most.
Good luck! And don't assume your age will make it hard -- the mechanics of driving are pretty straightforward with just a little bit of experience.
Having an instructor is nice, but a patient friend who you trust will also work.
The throttle is more sensitive than you'll expect at first. Automatic cars roll forward slowly unless you hold the brake. Old cars have less sensitive brake pedals - that's normal, not a sign of anything being worn out/broken.
Be confident. You will make mistakes, but you'll make fewer mistakes if you don't let mistakes get to your head.
When waiting to make a left turn, creep forward into the intersection. It will feel weird at first, but it makes traffic flow much more smoothly.
Take turns in counterclockwise order at stop signs. If people are going in clockwise order for some reason, do that instead. Just go with the flow. If you aren't sure when your turn is, wait for an awkward pause. The awkward pause means it's your turn (probably).
Use cruise control on highways. Nobody likes Lead Foot McGee and his magic fast-downhill-slow-uphill band.
Use your mirrors, and use your turn signals. This should go without saying, but I have to say it.
You're in New York. That's a hard place to learn to drive. But, if you become a good driver in New York, you'll be able to drive competently just about anywhere in North America.
I would add this: turn your head, not only your eyes, always control the blind spot by turning your head.
There's quite a few junctions just on my semi-rural commute where you're turning onto a fast moving road (60mph limit) from a full stop stop where you can only see a few hundred yards or less of the road you're joining. People seem to recognise the danger, but a lot of drivers react to it by being overly cautious pulling out and getting up to speed which just increases the time you're in the danger zone.
edit: also, don't just turn your head, my truck instructor insisted I move my head forwards as it changes your view even more and can make things like motorbikes more obvious.
So when you get to the stop, just look at everyone there and know that when the last one there is gone it's your turn.
I think one thing worth mentioning here is that it's helpful to learn some of the limits of the car. Find an open space with nobody around and just crush the brake pedal to the floor. That's what it's meant for. Knowing how fast a car can (or cannot!) stop from 10 or 20 or 40mph will teach you a lot. Studies show some insane percentage of rear-end accidents occur while the rear-ending car was nowhere near maximum braking.
The fact that an older car might feel like it has a less sensitive brake pedal is just that -- sensitivity. It has nothing to do with ability to stop. You just have to adapt to each vehicle to get the behavior you want out of it.
When I learned how to drive, we were taught right-of-way at a four way intersection goes to whoever pulled up first. I think it’s like this everywhere in the United States. Could be a regional thing, though, I suppose.
Regarding skill, I think it's genetic. Some people can get their license in a week, others it takes months. Video game skills probably help.
Definitely hire a driving instructor. From my friend’s description learning to drive in NYC (specifically Brooklyn) was far more stressful than when I did so as a teen in the 80s (rural Indiana and suburban Chicago). But they passed the driving test on their first try.
If possible find a friend who will let you do some low key driving with them in parking lots or suburbia before tackling the BQE or the LIE. My friend was a bit surprised to have to drive on both in their second or third class. It’s not absolutely necessary but if you’ve never driven it helps to get a bit of the feel (like, learning how the braking distance changes depending on speed is a lot easier in an empty parking lot than on Atlantic Avenue mid–afternoon).
My only advice as an aging driver is people are far more aggressive post Covid. Pre–Covid I felt that you had to be on your “A” game driving in Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn or the highways but people generally let you merge, didn’t tailgate constantly. There were always assholes of course, but they seem to have multiplied since 2020.
Your brain is plenty plastic enough but remember that your brain can learn far better by analogy and conscious correlation than a younger, more plastic brain can. You are probably more socially and situationally aware than a younger person which is a huge part of driving safely.
You also have a fully formed prefrontal cortex so unlikely to make stupid choices behind the wheel made by many of us who learned to drive younger.
Also, to get a feel for pushing a vehicle it's traction limits (that you should never attempt on the road) try go-karting. It will help you understand the relationship between speed, turning, traction, and control.
Being able to train some facsimile of those reactions in a safe and controlled environment is a key aspect of the driving process that people get small bits of over a long time. Hopefully in time enough to be able to save lives in time of emergency.
A younger person will have higher confidence in their new skills and take higher risks, completely forgetting how underpowered their car actually is. They will perform that risky overtake of a long vehicle at night.
An older person will be more cautious due to experience of life in general and perhaps more responsibilities (mortgage, family, career).
I got my license when I was 17 and still love the freedom of driving over 20yrs later. Learning "advanced" techniques with a manual car has added to the fun too - heel-toe braking; shifting blips; double de-clutching; etc - all make the drive more engaging (and smoother).
An EV on a motorway is my idea of hell!
In NYC they play a game of not letting you merge into a lane unless you basically threaten to crash into them.
I lived a life insulated from the morons of the general public until I started driving.
A few weeks ago I let one of these people pass in a rainstorm and then rolled my eyes as I watched him fishtail and almost kill himself on a cliff edge.
It’s not most drivers but it’s extremely common.
Young people are seriously impaired by emotions and lack of experience with real world in general.
Driving is a particularly hard thing to do. Younger people generally don't notice it because everything seems hard for them. So they just wing it and get into a lot of accidents.
As 40yo you'll be fully aware of the danger but also emotionally equipped to operate appropriately.
It probably took me longer than most people to learn how to competently scan everything you need to quickly while driving -- check the road, check your speed, check you're centered in the lane, check you're on the right path, think about which lane you should be in right now, check for stop signs or a red light, check for brake lights ahead of you to know to start slowing down for stopped traffic, and so on, repeated all the time, not getting distracted, eventually doing it without thinking about it consciously.
In retrospect, practicing those "n-back games" might help someone who doesn't have anything currently in their life requiring that same level of detailed attention, multitasking, and internal clock for moving between tasks.
But I didn't have any accidents and got there in the end. Totally comfortable driving now.
I started learning when I moved from NYC to San Diego (where driving is not optional). I don't envy you learning in NYC. You might consider avoiding any bad weather driving until you're very comfortable in good weather, and staying away from known places with aggressive driving too, which possibly includes all of Manhattan.
Sample description with video: https://glassdoctor.com/blog/adjust-your-car-mirrors-for-max...
Probably the main difference is overthinking. At 16 people assume they can learn anything with a little practice, but at 40 you might ask about "brain plasticity" and imagine driving is harder to learn than it is.
Not sure how things work in the US, but where I am, we get a standard package of 30 driving hours before we can do the exam. For me that wasn't enough,so I had to take additional hours,which did help a lot and removed knowledge gaps. In a nutshell,the older one is,the more hours will be needed. https://learndriving.tips/starting-out/how-many-driving-less...
My advice is to get a bigger number of hours so the instructor would have enough time to teach properly. Also I did on a manual, which is way less popular in the US, however it does help a lot understanding how the car behaves,etc.
As an adult, I find myself turning off music and other distractions because they take up too much of my processing ability, because my ability to process that much is significantly lower than it was when I was a teenager. Keep this in mind as you're reading other advice aimed at teenagers, and understand how much of driving training is teaching someone to pay attention when there's so many things going on around them to watch but they mostly need to watch what they are doing.
I would say meditate on possessing situational awareness super-powers that kick in to override impulsivity. When it comes to lane changes, merges, blending in, and coping with the unexpected, you need the capacity to take in a lot of situational information and fluidly integrate it into a set of actions in a way that becomes part of your muscle memory behind the wheel.
For example, not to be simplistic or patronizing, but if a dog jumps out at you, evade it, don't waste any time on the thought that a dog has jumped out at you.
Also remember that passing your test is just the first step in learning to drive, once you pass you'll then need to level up. Passing your test shows that you can drive in a way that's safe for other drivers, it doesn't mean that other drivers will drive in a way that's safe for you.
So, once you pass make sure you regularly drive and after a few years you'll find you have a natural instinct. You won't know why but you start doing things like giving some drivers a lot more room than others or slowing down when approaching some junctions even though there's nobody waiting there. When that happens trust your instinct as it's picked up on something that you're not consciously going to notice. That's why people who have recently passed their test are more likely to be in an accident than people who have been driving for longer, it isn't that they're unsafe drivers, it's just that they haven't developed an instinct for driving yet.
like everyone else says, practice is key.
be predictable and take your time. If you have to go slow, that is fine, even if 1 million people are honking at you from behind. In all my years of driving, i've never been rammed off the road for going too slow. That being said, stick to the right side on 2 lane roads because people will get aggressive if you are on the fast lane (left side). If you need to be somewhere that is time sensitive, leave earlier!
As an adult learner, you're much more aware of your own mortality. You really feel the weight of responsibility for avoiding accidents. So you'll probably be a more careful driver, but it will take longer to get comfortable.
If anything I found it a lot easier (I had taken driving lessons when I was 16 and didn’t perceive speed and danger like I do now).
I passed really easily, and have been driving about 50000 miles since (I moved from big city to the countryside which is why I needed the license).
Today, the gas pedal is the only game in eTown, an ignition may be life threatening, and your car may not be allowed into Zone 4.
If you have ridden a bicycle in traffic before you'll find it way easier as it's mainly managing position on the road and watching out for other traffic. Might be worth learning the controls first in an empty car park if you don't already know them. Small cars are generally easier to learn in.
First, let's get something out of the way. Not everybody is a good driver. Some people are horrible as teenagers and remain horrible for the rest of their lives because they make bad decisions or simply cannot focus on the road. These drivers will always pose a higher risk to themselves and everybody around them.
For the rest of us our ability to appreciate and respond to risks changes as we get older and this greatly modifies our driving behavior. When I was young I learned to drive fast. This means I got into many accidents in slower speed zones because I was driving too fast for conditions. I had to learn to not do that and take turns more carefully and learn to read the environment and pay attention. Older people will do this almost complete naturally even when they are first time drivers.
The other side of that coin is that I learned to drive at greater than 120mph on the freeway and I got very good at it. That means I could drive fast, test my limits, and still remain safe. Its no different than performance testing software in that you push the limits, measure the results, and learn from mistakes. The only difference between learning to drive extremely fast and performance testing software is that writing software will not kill you or leave you permanently disfigured.
Now I am in my mid 40s. I can still drive extremely fast and be safe, but I don't. Part of that is that I am a bit more risk adverse since I older, but even more to the point is that I have less disposable income to spend on vehicle maintenance and traffic convictions. I suspect if I started learning to drive now, in my mid 40s, that I would never have learned to drive fast like that. My behavior would eliminate the opportunity. Most people also have some forms of motor-cognitive decline as they get older. Fortunately, this has not impacted my ability to drive, even at high speeds.
Some examples of driving fast include being clocked at 135mph in a 45mph zone. Another example is driving around 49 miles across Dallas in 27 minutes. Now, in all fairness that is off the charts extreme risk that almost nobody attempts to evaluate in real time, regardless of age, when it means increased probability of death or prison. The natural ability to abnormally evaluate high risk scenarios without getting nervous allows for learning things that cannot be learned otherwise.
Tires are the most important thing because they are your contact with the ground and absorb most of the road noise. If a tire blows out at high speed bad things will happen. Fortunately I have never had a blow out.
Shock can also come from poorly balanced tires and a loose steering column. Everything needs to be tight and well balanced.
When you are driving fast you need to be hyper aware of what’s around you. The biggest risk are other drivers so always provide tremendous amounts of space. Driving fast does not mean driving aggressively. Do not change lanes often to dodge around slower cars. Be aware of upcoming interference to the road, such as construction.
If the experience does not feel safe and you do not feel in control of the vehicle you need to drive less fast. My first fast car was an experimental Mitsubishi Galant with a tight racing suspension. The engine was an unimpressive regular 4L engine, so it did not accelerate fast and maxed out at 135mph. But handled high speeds extremely well such that the suspension was most smooth at 110mph without excessive road noise until over 120mph.
Just don't be too chill, holding up traffic behind you. Go with the flow.
As with anything, don't over think it, just put the hours in.
understand that other people are only paying 1/4 or 1/2 their attention to what's going on around them. you need to make up for it. that means giving the car in front of you a bunch of room (more time to react for you) and other defensive driving, etc.
(i learned to drive at like 36. then started doing track days. got my racing license. now i do club and vintage racing. i still find highway driving a bit stressful, as other drivers do the strangest stuff)
Just take some lessons.
But here's a pro-tip. You don't even have to learn to drive. Just choose one primitive skill and pick a corresponding vehicle:
Don't learn to practically drive at all, but can pass the test? Get a Tesla.
Can only learn to floor the gas angrily and drive in straight lines? Get a BMW.
Can only swerve recklessly across lanes? Get a Nissan Altima.
Can only drive at 30mph and then confuse everyone around you with lane changes? Get a Prius.