Autism (/dyspraxia/related difficulties) and learning to drive

[MeadowHay]

Can anyone motivate me? Success stories? I am autistic and have poor motor skills, poor spatial awareness, difficulty multi tasking etc. I have wanted to drive for a couple of years but wanted to learn automatic as I was concerned clutch control etc would be particularly difficult for me and massively slow down my learning or even prevent it. I have been searching for an auto driving instructor/on waiting lists for approximately 18 months to no avail, there just aren't any locally with any availability. I have now had 6hrs of driving lessons with my DH's old instructor and still haven't even driven on a road. I knew this was going to be an uphill battle for me but the terror of potentially spending thousands of pounds on lessons and then never learning is really scary. We are a low income family so the driving lessons are a HUGE outlay for us that we are really going to struggle to afford in the long term.

I don't care if it takes me a long long time to pass my test, as long as I do it eventually. Does anyone have any success stories they can share with me?

Talk yourself through, seriously when you're own car it really doesn't matter if you say, clutch down in to first, set the bite, release handbrake etc. So don't stress when learning

Manuel is not impossible, it may take a bit longer but it opens up more driving options but auto is just as good..

I suspect that I may have some degree of dyspraxia. DS has and it is in my family. I struggle with organisation, have an unorthodox sense of logic and gross motor skills such as swimming and riding a bike were rather delayed (16 & 19). I was beyond hopeless at ball sports.

With driving, I had a year of 2 hr lessons, and passed second time, 3 weeks and one lesson after my first go. I got stuck on clutch control for months. I remember going into 5th gear for the first time... as my left hand went right on the gear stick, so did my right hand on the steering wheel. That's the only time I remember my instructor intervening!
My most hesitant skill is gauging space e.g. passing parked cars. If I can see a car infront, that is much easier to work it out from.

15+ years on, I still follow my driving instructor's cues such as pull in from overtaking when you can see the vehicle in your mirrors. Parallel parking has atrophied completely from lack of use. My record has been completely clean though, and I don't seem to incite road rage in others so I can't be that bad

I find urban driving draining. I much prefer an open road with less distractions to process.

I find swapping to other cars difficult. Some of that is logistics as some are just badly designed for short women with tight muscular calves. DH has an automatic, and it's so hard to remember not to use the left side of my body as that's the routine that I'm used to. I like MY car! We don't swap around as it's a PITA to adjust the driving position just right. DH is quite happy to adapt and swap to anything.

I totally agree about swapping cars, I love mine, it's small and very nippy and I drive around for a living, DD a close second but I will only use dh at an absolute push.

A lot of disability charities now have specialised driving instructors to help learn. I've known a few people on the spectrum to avail of them. I would say it's about 50/50 in regard to the number that managed to pass and continued driving afterwards. Some thrived in all areas with the independence that came with it, some just couldn't cope with how much anxiety it generated for them.

My daughters both sound like you, autistic tendencies and no short term memory. They had two or three lessons a week for a while and then dropped to one for a bit till they passed their theory and then back up to two or three. I spent many hours practising the online theory lessons with them and their driving instructor was really patient and practically became part of the family! Their is also a box on the driving test that you can tick for learning difficulties and they take them into account on the test ie they won’t tell you more than one instruction at once if you say you have memory problems

How tall are you? And can you adjust the height of the seat? I ask as I am 5 foot 1, and my mum (who is tall) kept asking me if I could see the rise of the bonnet when I was having huge clutch control problems when setting off. I realised that I was too short to see the bonnet rise (which it does a bit when you are at biting point). So I bought a thick cushion! Once I could, I had the trigger that I was at biting point and I never looked back.

I have autism and passed my test the second time, theory first time. I found having regular lessons (2/3 a week) really helpful because I didn't forget anything that way. I was really bad when I first started and thought I'd never pass but you just have to keep going.

Also I had a really patient female driving instructor. I was six months pregnant when I passed and very hormonal but she was brilliant.

I'm being diagnosed for autism and definitely have some coordination problems. I passed my test on the 4th or 5th go (I lost count) when I was 22. I'm 43 now and been driving on and off since (on and off because cars are expensive)

I've driven manual and automatic and had no problems with either.

I guess looking back I can see it took me longer to get into driving as my hands and feet don't like doing different things - I'm crap at dancing, exercise classes, musical instruments etc - but now it just comes naturally.

My 24 year old dd has high functioning autism. She has problems with over estimating danger, cant understand why others would not obey the rules of the road and I worry she might panic in an unexpected situation. Maybe this is mostly confidence related? We also live in London so less of a necessity. Possibly.

Yes I'm sure panic in unfamiliar situations will be difficult for me too but tbh I imagine that happens to lots of new drivers, autistic or not, I hope with time I would just get more confident and manage better. In general I am actually quite level headed and good in an actual crisis/emergency situation, my anxiety is disproportionate in situations that are not actually emergencies I find.

I can adjust my instructor's seat really high yes, I have to pump it up very high so I'm sitting so much higher than him haha. I'm 5'5 and his wife is about 5'1 and drives the same car fine with pumping the seat up really high too.

Theory I am sure will be really easy for me, I'm good at memorising stuff from books, I have a photographic memory. I am worried hazard perception might be difficult for me though with delayed reaction times/anxiety/second-guessing myself or being over cautious, not sure. My instructor has a subscription to a theory practice software that I've just been enrolled in so will start slowly using that.

When is a good time to start learning that stuff and look to do my theory? Shall I start looking into it asap even if I don't plan to do the theory test anytime soon? I guess I need to learn the road signs in any event to drive safely lol.

Thanks everyone you are really helping me feel motivated. I really really want to do this, it will honestly feel like as big as an achievement as my first class degree if I get a driving licence!!!

Re other motor skills, I learnt to swim a bit as a child around the age of 11 and then didn't swim for many years and forgot how to do it. Same with riding a bike. They say you can't forget to do either, but I did. I relearnt both into adulthood but haven't done both for a few years now and last time I was in a pool a few months ago my swimming was much worse again as I couldnt remember it properly. Also when I say I can swim and ride a bike, I mean I could do a few splashy lengths and I can cycle around a park safely. No more than that lol but I'm sure I could improve those things if I had time to do it, but it would take me much longer than someone else.

Hello MeadowHay...can honestly say that my driving tests were much more anxiety-inducing and tense than my finals. Not to be demotivating - I did it eventually! And I also have forgotten how to ride a bike...pretty much completely.
The road signs should not be too difficult to remember - do them from the Highway Code as they are laid out quite well and logically.
Some of the theory questions need to be learned/crammed, like stopping distances. In my opinion the multiple choice questions and software approach narrows other questions down to more or less likely answers - although not ones concerning stopping distances, numberplate reading distances and similar. If I remember rightly you have to have passed your theory test before you can go on to book a driving test at all, so possibly worth waiting a while. Let's say that there may be a 6 week wait to get a test date if you were to try to contact and book the day after you passed your theory test.
Clutch control - possibly try some gentle hill starts in a non-busy area if you can? This will be annoying as it's more challenging and you will stall quite a lot while practicing, but it does give you more of a feel for it. Also try not to let your clutch leg get too tired or sore as this makes things a bit less controlled (had an instructor who had me reversing round a corner in a large car for ages...my knee felt like it was going to detach and that was not an encouragement).

Hi, just wanted to update that at my last lesson I finally drove on a real road! It was a late lesson so hardly any other traffic around and we just drove around in circles around a little roundabout basically but I didn't stall at all, or hit anyone/thing (foxes around). This alone feels like a big achievement haha. Thanks everyone for your kind words.

Actually re pain, my legs felt a bit sore and a bit like jelly after my last lesson and I had pain in my R hip too...does that mean I am just super weak and inflexible and I will build the leg/hip strength and flexibility with time or was I sitting wrong or something? I thought I was in a correct position though

That's great - well done you. As to the aches, it is probably tension and the fact that you are using muscles you don't usually use.

My dyspraxic DS passed first time on a manueal. We got him a few lessons at one of the off-road driving schools for a few lessons so he could get used to the multi-tasking required in a very low-stress environment and he took 15 "proper" lessons