Driving Experience

Let me tell you in the beginning itself that I am not comfortable with fast moving and changing things near me, maybe be because I get confused with influx of more data which in this case in volume of fast moving vehicles.

I have been enjoying biking in Pune from past 4 years, but it sometimes is a nightmare on Indian roads. When you talk about driving in US, all you can say is amazing experience. Road are widen, 4-6 lanes, long never ending roads and what’s important people here will be obeying the traffic rule.

I never drove a car in India and was very scared trying my hands in US. Driving on 4-6 lanes, vehicles changing lanes, big trucks, monster trucks passing by, merging from the city roads on highways, keeping eye on exits or the speed limits, and these traffic rules are very strict in particular to Texas.

When you are learning things like, what if I forget to take the right exist, what if I crossed the speed limit, what if I enter in one way zone, what if I forgot to drive right lane side and took left side of road as in India?
I had always these fear and still have, but the good thing here is that, you don't have much options, you have to learn driving anyhow, else you have to be dependent on others not only for office commutations but for all other basic necessities like shopping, grocery etc.

What can add more to your fear than meeting with accident on your very first trial? Although I had planned to take driving classes, but I wanted to have a few hands-on before I can go for it, as people at driving school will just put you in driving seat and ask to drive. No surprises I was scared about it.

So we rented a car to help me learning the basic things of driving (on Indian DL!!! don't ask how did I get a 4 wheeler DL if I didn't know to drive at first place. Anything is possible in India). We went to a school parking on Saturday, made sure nobody was there (if you hit a person in US, you are gone even if you are Salman Khan). I drove steadily and cautiously till the time I had to take a turn. While turning the steering, it turned a bit more and came close to the curve, as human tendency I wanted to stop the car; the problem was I pressed on the accelerator instead of the BREAKS. Just 5 sec dhaak-dhaak, dhoom, dhak and don’t know how come I pressed the BREAK moment we were to hit the wall in front. Why the heck I couldn’t press it when I was paying full attention, may be my sub-conscious mind is smarter than me.

There was no major loss in that accident, no one was injured and on top we were fully insured, but my friend was more than terrified as if she just came close to GOD.

I know that was my mistake, but I also know that accident do happen, even if you’re the best driver in the world. You can avoid fear for some time, but eventually you have to face it, which I was trying to. It has been 2 months since that happened, I took few classes after that and now I am driving both in cities and on highways. I don’t fear from accident, but I want to make sure I drive to the safest, follow rules, be vigilant. I love it now, when I look back and think about that accident, what all I can say is “I now know where the BREAKS are”