Stalling, Crashing, and Restarting: Lessons From My Third Driving Lesson

We were at the traffic lights, halfway into my third driving lesson. It’s usually in these moments that my concentration slips. I was so focused on not stalling that when the light turned green, I stalled. Very annoying. I was about to perform the increasingly familiar reset rigamarole of handbrake on, clutch down, switch on engine, into first but the car behind me hadn’t stalled you see and I was kind of in the way. 

The thunk was loud and my head snapped back into the headrest. Something must have been knocked loose in my brain because my immediate thought was, “did I just double stall?“ And I immediately convinced myself that not only had I double-stalled but that I had stalled with the clutch fully down. I had invented a new way of stalling.

But the fog cleared and I realised that I was being unreasonably silly. My instructor gave a disgruntled roar and I realised that the fault was not mine and I have invented nothing. I was the crashee. The relief. The joy. Yes, joy. If you’re going to be in a bit of an accident, best to have one without injury that isn’t your fault during a 2-hour driving lesson that you’re only 30 minutes into.

Handbrake on. Neutral gear. Wiggle feet. My instructor and I did a round of “are you okay’s” and off she went to do battle. Platinum blonde, 4 foot nothing woman in 4 inch cork wedge heels began fierce negotiations with a 6-foot panicky man who still seemed to not know what had happened. I stayed in the car. I needed to pontificate.

I have always been very anxious about driving. I can get on with things when I am in the car with an instructor because I follow everything they say to the letter. I am much worse at making my own decisions. I kind of freeze. I either let the car keep going or never move. I need a force to be acted on me to take any action. I used to have nightmares of crashing cars 10 years ago when I was first learning to drive. In the dreams I kept using the brake but it sped the car up. And the other pedals did nothing. And it was dark. When I had shared this dream with my father, he replied that a car accident is inevitable and not to worry. I found this unhelpful and proceeded to fail my driving test twice and promptly gave up.

But now, having been shunted, my father’s words returned to me. It was the wave crashing against the rocks. The tension broke. The road was busy. The cars behind us were scrambling to merge into the right hand lane to get to where they needed to be. But I felt calm. Calm as a cloud. So this is what a minor, non-life-threatening crash feels like. I began focusing on practical details. We needed to get out of this busy area, we needed to park elsewhere, we needed to have a discussion. Would I be allowed to drive us there? I wanted to. The accident hadn’t been my fault. I could still drive.

“Are you okay to drive?”

My instructor was getting back in the car. She was shaking a bit, but you couldn’t hear it in her voice. It looked like she had taken control of the situation but I was going to be allowed to stay in control of the car. I nodded and took us to a quieter area and she suggested I get out of the car for some fresh air, but I was already halfway out.

He was about my age, burly, wearing grey crocs splattered with white paint and a miserable expression. His tone bounced between disbelief and grief as the two talked insurance. The dent on our bumper was tiny but the repair could be costly. Should he go through insurance? Should he pay? He paced between his front bumper and our rear bumper, touching the marks as if to heal them. He had just bought a house so not the best timing for him. But he’d be okay. It happens. He really didn’t realise he had been going that fast. Was I okay? I told him I was. Oh good, back to pacing. He knelt by my instructor’s car and stared deeply at the tiny scratch

My instructor followed his tumbling thoughts and sifted out some options. She told him about John, her mechanic, and how reasonable his prices were. I have trained in supporting someone after a trauma event but don’t think I could have provided the relief that John being a decent mechanic with reasonable prices did. Our guy unclenched.

Quick information exchange, awkward goodbye and off he went.

My instructor needed her e-cig for a bit. I hopped back into the driver’s seat and was ready to go. Little adjustment on the mirrors. Little grin on my face. We had moved from the smaller 20 roads to the 30 roads in this lesson and I had been doing really well. The stalling needed to be fixed but I felt good. Unfrozen. My instructor returned. 60 minutes left in the lesson. I checked my blind spot and off we went.

Quick note for any of my personal friends reading this post – this happened a few months ago. I’m totally fine, just a very slow writer.

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