How do I teach my mom to drive a car? Hello BHPians.
This might seem like a very silly question, but please hear me out.
I am pursuing my B.Tech in Automobile Engineering and i am all about automobiles since 3. I am 20 right now, and my family owns a 2016 Maruti Suzuki WagonR VXi Manual. We actually booked an AGS model back then, but relatives had told us that repairs would be expensive on automatic models. Us being car owners for the first time, got intimidated a bit and requested our order to be changed to a manual one. I learnt it when I was 16 with a little help (I'm a visual learner- i learnt how to control pedals and shift gears by observing cab drivers) and aced it within a week. I got my 4+2 licence couple of years ago back home in Hyderabad.
My mom has this extreme passion for driving. She has this junoon of driving the car all by herself. She often compliments me saying that I'm handling the car like a "leo toy". She had a Kinetic Zoom DX back in the day and she used to tell me how she used to race against her classmates on their Hero Hondas and their Kawasakis till Golconda. She's in her fifties now, and has a Hero Maestro for local runabouts. I feel its not safe for her to travel anything more than 3km on her scooter. Whenever I'm home, I drive her to far places like her friend's places or any gatherings, functions, etc. I dont want her to depend on cab services as they mostly reject our ride requests and are expensive for the most part.
And we got her enrolled in Maruti driving classes. She took 12 classes for 8000 INR, and well that didn't work out. She understood the steering sense (judging the car's dimensions during driving), but she misses out on pedal management. She often stalls the car, and gets confused pretty quickly. Me being the younger one, I get frustruated pretty quickly and feel bad later because of that. But hey, they taught us how to walk. So this is my turn to be patient with her.
She tried driving all by herself once with me in the backseat. There was a lorry driver who was very impatient and decided to overtake us. He overtook us from the right side and ended up knocking off the right ORVM. She has been scared out of her wits since then.
So yeah, how do I teach my mom about the pedal management? And how do i teach her about the gear shifts? She feels panicked whenever we drive into traffic, even when I'm the one driving. How do I remove this fear from her? How do I make her understand that the clutch is the most important thing in the entire driving process?
Lady owners of this forum, ma'am, you are most welcome to give your inputs on understanding your machine, from your point. It just aches my heart that we have paid these many EMI's just for the car to be lying in the parking lot and be used whenever I come home. I don't want to be too technical in terms of teaching her how the machine works. It would help me a lot on knowing about your perspective. It's such a cute little machine and deserves all the love and miles she was made for.
And men this forum who had to teach your moms or better halves, your perspective is most welcome. It will be extremely useful for me. I can see from the eyes of a man teaching their loved ones. Either ways the experience will count for me, as I'll have to do it twice😉.
Thanking you all in advance,
TVS Krishna. |