Do you learn from your mistakes

obi_waynne

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When you have had an accident or a near miss does it affect your driving in the future? Is this a good thing?

My first crash really woke me up and I've been more careful ever since.
 
When you have had an accident or a near miss does it affect your driving in the future? Is this a good thing?

My first crash really woke me up and I've been more careful ever since.

im a pratt when drivin around i dont put other peoples lives at risk but dont seem to care about my own,,i think it would take a crash to wake me up..
 
my bumps and crashes never really changed the way i drove but 3 things have changed my driving and thats experience, the near miss i had on the motorway and i now have a daughter to provide for and look after
 
It's never bad to criticise your own driving. Do it with a view to improving your skills constantly. I've been driving over 22 years and have covered over 700,000 miles in that time. And I'm still learning. Not so much the car control thing, face it, modern cars are easy to control in even the most extreme situations. Not even observation and perception - I don't miss much at all. That's possibly an understatement!

Where I still let myself down at times is attitude.

A bad attitude to other drivers (no matter how they've p...ed you off, is possibly the single worst trait to exhibit. It's not frequent, and I don't do traditional road rage as such but I should NOT let another road users' actions cause me the stress and blood pressure increases that occur at times.
 
I've only had near misses with crashes, part from the other week when i was being an idiot and went over a mound n landed in a bramble bush,
But i do try to learn from my mistakes, unfortunatly it only seems to last a couple weeks.
 
ive really changed since my last accident :s skidding round a roundabout into some railings does knock some sense into you
 
Am I right in saying this thread gained inspiration from my recent accident? I think it's good to learn from mistakes and to overcome them. I had to drive home past the same corner I crashed on earlier, I took it at 10mph this time!

I think it has made me a bit more cautious, but I'm sure it's just a temporary loss of confidence in the car (not my driving).
 
Am I right in saying this thread gained inspiration from my recent accident? I think it's good to learn from mistakes and to overcome them. I had to drive home past the same corner I crashed on earlier, I took it at 10mph this time!

I think it has made me a bit more cautious, but I'm sure it's just a temporary loss of confidence in the car (not my driving).

That kind of knee jerk reaction is not uncommon shortly after a RTA. Deep down I think it might have put a slight dimple in your confidence, despite what you say here.

And it's nothing to worry about either. We're all human and fear or caution can be subconsciously learned, much as we try to inhibit such thoughts.

I still think that you're situation might have been caused by a binding rear brake shoe which de-stabilised the car. This theory is only based upon what you've said previously about the incident. The way you've described your driving here and previously suggests that you do think it through systematically; the mechanicals of the car and the road simply managed to get the better of you on this occasion. We're all human, and it's human to err.

Don't let it get to you though - don't nag yourself incessantly. The most important thing is that neither you nor anyone else came to harm. It's metal and plastic at the end of the day. Pricey metal and plastic to fix or replace I totally agree.

But it's all mendable. Learning from mistakes is good. Even ones that don't cause any incident at all. You know, like this - (to myself)...a self applied bollocking: - "OK Paul, you got away with that, and rightfully and considered all the what if's and what if nots but did you really NEED to make progress to that degree at that point and if so for what reason or to whose detriment if you hadn't done so etc."

I suppose the goal is to sieze opportunites safely rather than commit to taking uncalculated risks. THe problem with roads and cars is that even if the risks are small the stakes are high!!

This is all getting very Freudian by its very nature but thought experiments can be useful indeed in analyzing one's own driving.

Glad to hear you're OK mate and this minor anomaly hasn't seen you wary of driving since it happened. And let's get that Beds Herts Bucks Northants meet set up - the weather is improving - you never know it might even tempt me to wash the car just incase anyone is deranged enough to want to photo the thing!!

Kind regards,

Paul Anderson.
 
my first crash, i didnt have my seatbelt on, luckily i was only doing 20 mph
youd be suprised though how voilent i was throwing even at 20 mph

ever since i wear my seatbelt
 
Glad to hear you're OK mate and this minor anomaly hasn't seen you wary of driving since it happened. And let's get that Beds Herts Bucks Northants meet set up - the weather is improving - you never know it might even tempt me to wash the car just incase anyone is deranged enough to want to photo the thing!!

Kind regards,

Paul Anderson.

Thanks for all your concern and advise mate. It's all been very well received. :D

As for the meet, I was thinking May time. Possibly Sunday 17th May. I will come up with an idea for something and a location over the next few days, post it up and see what the interest is like.
 
It did for me, i came over a hill (its on a corner) on a greasy road and the back end came out so far i ended up almost sideways - for weeks after took it much more slowly coming over this. Same thing in the snow, used to drive far to fast an came off the road - by pur luck the snow was so deep it just piled up in front of the car and i stopped me from hitting the wall - much more respect for driving in snow now, although i do love it,
 
I've only ever suffered from 'rear ender's' in 37 years of driving, well so far anyway, so the only thing to learn from that is 'don't go out at all if you don't want your car damaged'.

However I nearly did the same to someone else whilst driving when too tired recently on the A1 near Baldock. Luckily my wife spotted it before I did and I 'stood the car on end' stopping about 2 feet short. I immediately turned the heater down and drove a bit slower, vowing not to do long Friday night drives after work again - well not in the dark anyway.
 
Am I right in saying this thread gained inspiration from my recent accident? I think it's good to learn from mistakes and to overcome them. I had to drive home past the same corner I crashed on earlier, I took it at 10mph this time!

I think it has made me a bit more cautious, but I'm sure it's just a temporary loss of confidence in the car (not my driving).

Yup! It bought back memories from my crash and how I felt and how it affected me. I think deep down we all tend to drive differently after something like that and it often lasts for a long time. The best lesson for any driver to learn is that they are fallable.
 
im a pratt when drivin around i dont put other peoples lives at risk but dont seem to care about my own,,i think it would take a crash to wake me up..

I would have thought that not worrying about your own life must put other people at risk as they are the ones you will hit whilst acting the pratt!

Never had a big one, fortunately, but lots of silly, lack of concentration low speed bumps over the years. The close shaves and the almost lost it moments can teach you more than an actual crash beacuse they show you the limits of car and driver. A crash indicates that you were going too fast for the situation, but not by how much.
 
I def learned from my mistakes wrote off two cars in the space of a month the first a toyota corolla blinded by the sun skidded on a soakin wet road went over a roundabout and wrapped the car around a road sign on the other side haunted it was 6 in the mornin the road was quiet was on the to way work because any later would have prob killed myself or others. the second a couple of weeks later was a drink driver in front of me jammed on i ended up rear ending him( went to court and he was found guilty of the crash on the grounds of being over the legal limit thankfully. i discloated my shoulder thou and was only doin 25 mph i def learned to slow down on wet roads and to stay wel back on drivers in front of me
 
The mistakes don't have to result in collisions in order to learn from them.

Perhaps we should all be a little more attentive to our respective attitudes adopted whilst driving. Attitude is probably a very strong contender in the stakes when it comes to accounting for all RTAs.

Driver error is widely reported as being the main contributor. But is it attitude that catalyses this?
 
Yes I think attitude plays a big role. I put driver error into the following categories

1) Distractions (Radio, Climate controls, Dropping something, Glove box retrieval etc...)
2) Tireness and slow reactions
3) Not being fully aware where the limits of the car/driver are
4) Misjudgement, or bad decision making

In pretty much all of those attitude plays a role. 2 is probably the most dangerous as we are not awake enough to be aware.

4 is something we can all do and it is probably the least likely of the set to be prevented by driver attitude but experience would come into play on this one.
 
yes, really, if you dont then you will end up making those mistakes over and over.

like today, I went up to box hill on my bike, some of the roads were quite gravely in the centre where I ride. so on the way back I remembered that the bike nearly ditched on the gravel so rode at the edge.

and I overcooked it a couple of times on corners, so remembered that the next time and slowed enough so I could power round instead of having to throttle off some and change my line.
 

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