Driving Me Crazy

My daughter is about to start driving lessons, and while that fact is going a long way to making me feel very old, it is also filling me with a peculiar sense of chest-tightening anxiety more akin to panic than pride. It doesn’t seem that long ago that I strapped her into a car seat for the first time, and here she is, 17 years later, about to strap herself in and drive off into the unknown.

 I certainly won’t be strapping on the L-plates with enthusiasm and offering to accompany her on the open road, as patience is not a virtue I am blessed with, unfortunately. I will use this excuse to her whilst simultaneously handing over a humungous cheque for lessons, so as to hide the real truth. The truth is, I don’t want to pass on my freshly fostered neurosis to my motoring green offspring. I used to be perfectly confident behind the wheel of a car, you see, and then I went to live in the Middle East.

Years of living in Dubai have transformed me into a nervous driver, and I realise this now that I am back in the land of the Highway Code. Car parking spaces have definitely got smaller while I was away in the desert, and car parks have shrunk to Tonka toy proportions. What sort of sick mind designs and builds a multi-story where cars have to do a three-point turn to get up to the next level? Is space that much of a premium that they couldn’t allow a few more inches for manageable manoeuvring? How does anyone drive a 4x4 in a UK city?

 I can’t get away with parking in the ‘mother and baby’ spaces at a supermarket anymore as my kids now tower above me. It’s not fair on either count.  Don’t get me started on these ridiculously narrow streets where two cars can’t even pass each other let alone squeeze into a parking space. I’m much more likely to drive round for half an hour looking for a slot I can easily glide into, rather than risk the ridicule of public parallel parking.

The Highway Code obeying residents of the UK see a car at a junction and they don’t see what I see. They see a law-abiding citizen waiting their turn to pull out of the junction in a controlled, orderly fashion, slotting safely behind the driver owning right of way. I drive past junctions these days and I turn into a gibbering wreck. What I see is not an upstanding member of the driving community, but a potential junction junky. A crazy, death-defying motorist who, in the seconds before I pootle past them, hurtles out of the junction into the path of my oncoming vehicle, causing me to brake furiously, missing my car by centimetres, just to get ahead.

My nervousness isn’t greeted with the patience and recognition I deserve as “Nervous Ex-Expat Driver”. It produces a variety of responses from drivers here: confusion, annoyance and blatant aggression. Maybe I should get a bumper sticker.

To counter all three responses I have perfected ‘The Stare’. Well, to be honest with you I actually perfected ‘The Stare’ whilst I was still an expat. It comes in very handy. My hands remain furiously clamped to the steering wheel as I penetrate their evil force field with just one flashing glance. “Take that you angry motorist”. For really annoyed, red-faced, fist shaking insults, I unleash ‘The Stare’ along with ‘The Mind Swear’. This basically means that I hurl inaudible profanities at them from the safety of my locked vehicle. That’s the other habit picked up from the Middle East: silent road rage.

We all heard the stories in Dubai of the poor expat motorist, a victim of one junction junky encounter too far, who flipped the bird at a blacked out window, only for the occupant to be the police chief’s brother-in-law-twice-removed. The next thing, the middle fingered fool finds themselves on the wrong end of the law, banged up in Bur Dubai nick for months on end, while the rest of the family members are deported in shame.

Urban myth or absolute truth, motorists in Dubai learn the art of silent road rage or face the consequences. It’s quite a shock to see blatant displays of motoring anger directed at me, “Nervous Ex-Expat Driver”. One more reason to invest in that bumper sticker.  

The thing I’m not used to, however, is a driver being courteous. There are some lovely people in this country who actually allow you to change lanes when you indicate, rather than speeding up dangerously to make sure you cannot, under any circumstances, execute the manoeuvre you are trying to undertake. They flash their lights kindly, which doesn’t mean, “Stop what you are doing- I’m coming through regardless”. It means “after you”. That’s nice.

Hopefully my daughter will get on very well with her confident driving instructor and become a confident driver herself. I’m just glad she’s not learning to drive in the UAE. Bumper sticker anyone?