Teaching My Daughter to Drive (And Myself to Breathe), Steven Bochenek
I’m not about to give up my weekly soapbox and start shilling for Young Drivers of Canada (YDC) but I have to say they teach our children well.
J is our second daughter to take YDC’s comprehensive in-classroom and in-car training programs and, yes, her sister is still alive and free of any driving infractions. The courses aren’t cheap, but the instruction is invaluable and ultimately saves us money on insurance.1
 The Teen Driving Chronicles. Click image to enlarge |
The students who wish to pass their driving test after the lessons need to practice with a qualified driver. Me.
I swear it was just twenty minutes ago when I was teaching J to ride a bike. She took to it like a duck to paté. Caught up in the moment, she’d shoot up the lane behind our Riverdale house, loving her first taste of freedom courtesy of her branded ‘Monkey Coaster’. (Cervélo, eat your heart out.) I recall it terrified me because jerks looking for shortcuts would cut down the lane at sickening speeds. What chance they’d even notice, never mind stop for a cycling four-year-old?
Fast-forward twelve years and multiply that anxiety because the jerks are ubiquitous.
J completed the practical YDC classes in January. But ask any overweight gym teacher: there’s a wide chasm between the theoretical and the practical; knowledge and capability aren’t the same. Getting her learner’s permit through an online quiz that could double as a vetting process for insanity (“At a stop sign, you should: a) stop b) slow, sound horn and proceed cautiously c) park d) false e) yellow f) all of the above.”) is leaps and bounds away from actually driving – especially in the city.
At the time of writing, April 10, J has finished four of six in-car YDC lessons. She spreads two weeks between each and we practice in our second car, an automatic. Neither she nor her sister, nor their mother, wanted to learn stick in the city. (Kudos to Simon, this article’s co-writer, for his gumption.)
She reports how her instructor is an eminently calm soul who never raises his voice. He purrs play-by-play comments in a style that eases tension: “You should have signaled before merging”, “The accelerator’s the one on the right”, or “You can’t reverse into a bus; instead, brake and shift into drive.”
The instruction in our first sessions lacked such mellow polish.
 The Teen Driving Chronicles. Click image to enlarge |
Not because she doesn’t know what she’s doing. It’s me: in the GTA we groom some of history’s stupidest drivers. Even the most ardent Toronto-hater would grant us that flaccid ‘world-class’ epithet this once.
But when you teach, you also learn. It’s a paradox: explaining and re-explaining something so someone else understands it, you both learn. Her driving’s improved quickly and, with yogic breathing exercises, I’m coming along, too.
At first, I’d take her out on weekends and evenings when there was far less traffic. Even then, we’d still find cul de sacs to practice in, so I could see everything approaching.
Different as it is, the theory was drilled into her and taught her well. She understood where to position us to parallel park. She knew the default speed on city roads when no signs are visible. And she displayed a situational awareness you wouldn’t expect in a generation raised in the glow of computer screens.
 The Teen Driving Chronicles. Click image to enlarge |
Then this morning during rush hour, she drove to school, 5 km across mid-town Toronto, from the Annex to Lawrence Park. You’d have to visit Montreal during Grand Prix weekend to find more bad more roadmates in one trip. (Think that’s exaggeration? Just two days ago, police blitzed the GTA in an annual spring inspection of commercial vehicles. Over the past four years, 65 percent of randomly flagged vehicles failed! This year nearly half were immediately pulled from the road. More gob-smacking still, of the tow trucks called, four failed the inspection themselves!2 So is my condition neurosis or just awareness?)
It was good driving on J’s part and better therapy for my neuroses. She calmly looked and signaled before changing lanes. Whenever someone else contravened the rules of the road, she mentioned it but, with Zen placidity, let it go and gave the contravener way.
Footnotes:
1 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/car-tips/its-covered/sex-age-and-auto-insurance/article1724311/
2 http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/Canada/Toronto/ID/2374097060/
