The Suburbs Meant I Never Learned How To Drive Properly

About a year ago, I moved to the city. The proper city, with the tall buildings and everything. I learned pretty quickly that this was where I was always supposed to be. Ever since, though, I’ve reckoned with my past, and wondered how where I lived had shaped me as a driver.

I grew up in the duller suburbs of South Australia. The roads were roomy, traffic was relatively low, and most driveways had a couple of cars in them by the early 2000s. Living in the shadow of the Holden factory meant that the sound of squealing tires was never far away; the local hoon culture was strong. Burnouts were a way of life for many a teen driver, who would start out behind the wheel of a hand-me-down Falcon or Commodore.

It was against this backdrop that I learned to drive. I racked up hours behind the wheel, passed the tests, and eventually got my license. Only, once I was free to drive on my own … I realized that I’d barely learned to control a car at all. I’ve been musing of late: Was this all because of where I came from?

I went through the usual training of a young Australian driver. Family members taught me the basic skills required to drive around the neighborhood. We only had automatics, so that’s what I learned on. I dearly wanted to try a manual, but that would have to wait until I got one of my own years later. As the weeks and months went by after my 16th birthday, I picked up the basic skills—how to accelerate, steer, and brake, and eventually how to park without hitting things.

Armed with 50 hours of experience driving with family members, I enlisted a driving instructor to train me the final skills I needed to get a license. Over four weeks, I picked up the fundamentals required to pass South Australia’s Vehicle On Road Test (VORT). You basically had to complete a bunch of standard maneuvers—three point turns, U-turns, and parallel parking—while sticking to a strict mirror-signal-maneuver doctrine. I got dinged marks for doing a U-turn at a bus stop, but overall scored a passing mark on my first try. That was it—I had my provisional license, and I was a real driver!

Suddenly, I was free to drive myself anywhere a road could take me. I could drive through the CBD at rush hour, or I could cross expensive suburbs in the mid-afternoon. I did both of these things within a week of getting my license. I drove the wrong way down a one-way street, and narrowly avoided disaster on the infamously horrifying Britannia roundabout, but overall survived. As time went on and I regularly drove to work and, later, university, I became competent enough at regular driving to get around safely. I knew my place in traffic, and knew how to behave in order to avoid hitting others and them hitting me.

It was only when I began to explore the … funner side of driving … that things started to go wrong. Within six months of getting my P plates, I binned my Falcon on a dark mountain road, spearing straight off into a tree. I’d gotten completely mixed up over a girl, and decided to clear my head with a canyon run while blaring The Offspring at full volume. This seemed like a great idea until I was slamming the brakes at 80 km/h and headed straight towards a sheer drop. Pleasantly, my Falcon would wind up stuck on top of that lovely little tree, and I was saved a nasty drop into the beyond – the main embarrassment being that I had to wait for a passing local to tow me off the stump that my rear diff was now stuck on.

This taught me a lesson: I wasn’t as good at driving as I thought I was. I thought I was nailing the corners right up until I ran out of road and locked up the brakes in a straight line. Really, though, it was my first time in such a situation. None of my driving experience thus far had included late-night canyon runs, threshold braking, or The Offspring.

It wasn’t long before such a situation would occur again. Still 17, still young, dumb, and full of … fluids. Meanwhile, my car was old, dumb, and full of fluids. Emphasis on dumb; I had no ABS, no traction control, no stability control – just me, 200 horsepower, and a steering wheel. Thus, when my friends said I should slow down around a Melbourne roundabout in the wet, I proclaimed I was in control. After all, I was doing the posted speed limit of 50 km/h, right up until the back end stepped out sideways. I overcorrected, slammed into a curb, and smashed up the rear end something awful.

Once again, my skills had been proven wanting. And once again, it was my first time facing such a situation. I’d driven in the rain before, to be sure. But none of my family, and none of my instructors, had ever taught me how to respond to a slide. They’d never even mentioned it, let alone put me in a situation where I could practice the skills and learn the muscle memory required. I’d had two crashes by this point, and as much as they were down to my own stupidity, they were also down to my total lack of driving skills.

Locking up in the braking zones is a great way to get your race car in the local paper. pic.twitter.com/JE0acm7CD9

— Lewin S. Day (@rainbowdefault) July 15, 2024

Track days ended up teaching me a lot more about car control, because you could actually push a car to the limit and learn how to deal with what happens there.

As I grew up, I met many drivers from all walks of life. Many of them were far better than I. There was the French farm boy who could sling a Land Cruiser down a dirt road at 130 km/h like he was taking his grandmother to church. The Elizabethan hoon who could swing a Commodore through a perfect 180-degree arc with all the finesse and smoke of a major naval engagement. The strange girl whom I only met once, but she flung a Chrysler PT Cruiser into a backwards J-turn off a curb so deftly that I figured she’d surely had some kind of professional Hollywood stunt training.

All of these drivers had found a way to learn the skills that the system simply didn’t teach. The French kid grew up driving the backroads of his family farm from a young age, where he could learn how to handle a car in low-grip situations. The hoon wasn’t afraid of South Australia’s overbearing police, and simply picked up better car control through brazenly ignoring the law. As for the mystery girl, I never learned how she did what she did, but I’m sure it was a great story besides.

Unfortunately for me, I was merely an unexceptional suburban boy. I wasn’t brave enough to go hooning through the streets, and got in plenty of trouble the handful of times I even approximated dangerous driving. I didn’t have farm back roads on which to learn how to handle loose surfaces and slides and the like, either. I was expected to drive around below the speed limit and just hope that I never got in a situation I couldn’t handle.

In the years since, I’ve added to my driving skills only slightly. I’ve had some limited experience on the track, which taught me how to handle driving at higher speeds. I also spent some time doing loops on the skidpan, and I picked up a lot more there than I ever did in any driving lesson. I got a little bit of action on a dirt road here, and a little bit of time on the beach there. I got better, always a little better, but I’ve never quite gotten good.

My clutch kicks still leave a LOT to be desired.

Overall, though, I’ve lacked the time and money to ever become the kind of driver I admire. I certainly wouldn’t hire me to do a decent burnout, let alone an artful drift or a nifty Scandi flick.

I’ve always wondered how good I’d be if I’d grown up on a farm or by some kind of grassroots racing circuit. Alas, I grew up in the suburbs, and they’ve left me a poorer driver than I might have been. Perhaps one day, I’ll fall into a giant pile of money, and I’ll copy Ken Block’s fine example. I’ll go out and spend day after day behind the wheel, sliding around until I learn how to drive like a master. That’s the dream.

This will be my last post as a regular writer at The Autopian. I’d like to thank everyone I worked with for being a legend, and give a special thank you to the readers who make all this possible. It’s been one heck of a ride. Here’s to the future.

Image credits: Lewin Day