Team-BHP - How and when did you learn to drive?

First time I drove, was inside my house compound, when I was 16. Was a tata india V2 DLE model!

Believe it or not, no one told me how to drive (apart from being told to lift the clutch slowly)! All my experience playing racing games taught me to drive :D

First time on the road was a 100m drive from my house to the temple on my 18th birthday in my current swifty!

The day after the IIT-JEE exams, I went to the RTO and got my learners. Drove home right after I got the papers. I was already prepared with red insulation tape in each pocket so I could splash an L board on ANY car I get the chance to drive!! Good old days!

I opted for choices 1 &7 although for 7,l am not sure it was lame or serious.
Started driving when I was around 15. I learnt the basics by observing which was probably a year or two earlier.The only confusion in my mind was the gear shift pattern.Should it be only sequential or otherwise.
I started off by starting the car in neutral and letting it warm up for my dad before he left for work. Then slowly started reversing it out of the lot and park it outside the gate and that distance increased to the length of the lane we stayed on and then to a longer round the block ride, all without my dad knowing, which I'm not proud of. This was on a first generation 800.
I got most of my practice on a 540dp during my summer vacations on narrow winding back roads of Kerala and I must say that is what fine tuned my driving to quite an extent in early days. I used to do multiple trips to the town and back home and finally at the end of a vacation,i used to return to Bangalore like I returned from some social work.

Finally got a my LL and with my dad next to me along with a lot of lectures and blastings ,learnt to drive in traffic which was a whole different ball game. I never got to drive much in city since my dad used the car until it got passed down to me ,which was much later. But by then ,I had started motorcycling although I equally love driving.

My father was the tutor. Still remember how confident i was driving the car on the empty highways and seeing that he made me go inside a narrow barely one car sized side road with walls on both sides!

All my confidence [over-] came a crumbling down. I started to sweat trying not to hit the side walls and after a few harrowing minutes i gave up :P

Over-confidence of your skills on road is a dangerous feeling to have. Know your limits, understand them and be a better driver was his comment later.

My cousin elder brother taught me to drive.

My Age - 14/15
Place - the now famous Lokhandwala, Mumbai which was earlier just an open stretch of a dead end road.
Car - Maruti SS80

Used to wake up my brother at 5 in the morning, to take me to that open stretch, where he would allow me to hold only the steering wheel in the initial one month. Slowly he taught me what he was doing, and by the end of 6th month, I drove on that stretch of empty road - once.
After that, did not get to drive for another 2 years.
But the basics were cleared and I till date remember those.
Lessons from the motor driving school were never required

Bought my first car 10 years later and that is when I started to drive frequently.

PS: Someone asks me to drive in Lokhandwala today, I would refuse and take a rickshaw.

Age: 13
Tutor: Dad
Car: Hyundai Santro
Location: Dwarka, Delhi

Initially, seeing my craze for driving, my dad asked me not to drive alone and used to take me to the empty roads of Dwarka every morning. We used to leave at around 5 in the morning and come back post an hour of practice session. Eventually, considering the scarcity of time my dad had due to his business, I was allowed to drive to school, tuitions and other places, but this happened only after my dad became confident about my driving skills. I on the other hand, drove responsibly and carefully.

I got the first taste of driving when I was 8 or 9 years old(Year 2000 or 2001). Dad took me to a nearby field, and taught me how to move the car(our M800) with just clutch. Surprisingly, I managed to cleanly move the car and bring it to a halt in the very first attempt. Dad had clearly warned me not to touch the accelerator pedal.

After that I never got to be in the driver seat. In 2006, our M800 and old Baleno sedan were parked at our under construction house. Baleno was too big for me, hence I gave it a skip. Moved the 800 around pillars, again using just clutch and brake. This went on for months and slowly I mastered the art of parking and moving the car cleanly in tight spaces. Only once did I crash into a pile of bricks which wasn't visible and that damaged the number plate.

The first car which I drove properly was our Baleno in 2008 IIRC. And surprisingly, due to its torquey nature, I found it much easier to drive than the 800. No one taught me how to drive, but I knew the mechanism of Manual transmission roughly as I used to secretly go through dad's college books lol:

How and when did you learn to drive?-img20191126wa0009.jpg

How and when did you learn to drive?-img20191126wa0016.jpg

The clear understanding of the mechanism helped me in cleanly shifting through the gears and by the time I reached 3rd gear, I had enough confidence to take the car out on my own. This happened in a closed colony and dad never allowed me to drive until I was legally able to do so.

Had to wait till 2011, when I got my licence. Dad was clueless when and how I learnt to drive.

Unfortunately the Baleno was gone by then. However to relive the moments, I went to a True Value outlet which had a Baleno on sale and took a longish TD.

By the time I had the liberty of driving, I was in a college. However my friend owns a dealership and I improved my skills and had lots of fun on the TD cars. Our first longish trip was on a WagonR Demo car.

Age - 16
Tutor - None
Car - WagonR
Location - J&K

My parents had a strict policy on underage driving and hence, wasn't allowed to drive a vehicle on public roads. This rule , however, was primarily for the public roads and hence, was not applicable to our porch area. This was my defense every time:D, either of my parents questioned me on why I was parking the car 20 times a day, beneath our shed. That is how I ultimately learned to drive. Driving at parking speeds in our porch for more than an year, parking the car, and then taking it out of our parking area(which was meant for the two wheelers) almost 20 times a day.

Mind you, this was a very cramped space as we didn't park our cars there. We had a considerably wider space for easy parking of our cars. From driving the car head first into the parking space between two big steel rods holding the shed, to parking it in reverse there soon after, my practice of almost 2 years paid off when I went for my driving test when I turned 18, albeit, the most difficult part of the test day was not the test itself, but the drive back home with dad, as he acutely measured my driving behavior.:coldsweat

Age - 16 IIRC
Tutor - Self, Gear position explained by a neighbour, the rest extrapolated from scooter lessons
Car - M800
Location - Ranchi

Was taught to ride a scooter in 2 days by a relative. Essentially the sync between accelerator and clutch was the biggest takeaway since cycling had taught me balance.

One day the car was outside and I thought I should be able to park it in the driveway. I had already watched how people drive so started it, engaged a gear and the car stalled, happened for 2-3 times then a neighbour walked over and pointed that I was shifting into 3rd rather than the first, showed me how to engage and that was it. I started initially by driving in and reversing out of the driveway for a long time and then a short spin in the colony every morning. Eventually venturing out on the main roads with Dad sitting along to judge.

Age : 12
Tutor : Self
Car : Standard 10
Location : Broach, now called Bharuch, Gujarat

We lived in a quiet society and once when my parents had gone out, my friends and i sneaked out with the car. before that i used to help my father by reversing the car correctly in its place and starting it once every two days- to keep the battery charged.

Unfortunately, such outings got bolder and once we got caught- the result being i was shunted out to a boarding school in Baroda ( There was no english medium school in Broach those days beyond the 4th standard) I used to have a private tutor who used to spend two hours every day with me. His goal and mine were the same- as to how quickly to pass the two hours.lol: