If you’re a regular visitor of this website, odds are that you’re a car enthusiast already, or simply wish to digest some excellent, reliable and interesting news about the world of automotiles. It can be hard to consider just how driving might be without this passion for vehicles, because it comes so naturally to you. However, as we teach our children the best attitudes to bring to their driving tuition, it can sometimes be hard to see how someone’s lack of vehicle passion can prevent them from making the most of their road time. Blossoming a healthy interest in driving can make someone a better driver, one more reliable on the roads. This might come naturally to you so you may not have noticed it, but when viewing another’s driving or general attitude in a vehicle, we can see how it might be a hindrance.
If you live in any form of modern society, the chances are that you’ll need a vehicle to get around. We often think that we need a comfortable bed with well-pressed linens considering how we spend over a third of our lives sleeping, so why don’t we extend the same courtesy to our vehicles as a default? If commuting even an hour to your job a day, the time stacks up. If you wish to fall in love with driving all over again, teach your children a real reverence for automotives, or you simply wish your car cabin to be a centre of motoring goodwill, we would recommend nurturing your interest in the following methods:
Fantasy
It can be extremely healthy to experience your fantasy of racing, driving fast and sitting behind the wheel of the most expensive cars around today. If that sounds completely out of your affordability and time responsibilities, don’t worry, it is for most people. Thankfully, much cheaper options exist. It can be worthwhile to invest in a video game racing sim, such as Forza Horizon 4 or perhaps even F1 2018. Couple these games with a high-spec racing wheel, and the haptic feedback you receive can somewhat feel like you’re on the road. Exercising fantasy in this way helps you play with your vehicle of choice, to tune it virtually, and to experience the end result of those decisions. It helps you celebrate vehicles in a play space, a space you cannot replicate on the roads.
Road driving and racing are two completely different things. You’ll likely never know the extent of your cars handling around a corner if you don’t find a video game that lovingly recreates it through this experience. However, you may also be able to enter your vehicle in a track race, provided it is well-maintained and has the papers to show it. Tracks such as the famous Nürburgring in Germany will sometimes open to the public, offering general road users the potential of bringing their vehicle onto the lanes. Of course, you’ll be under strict driving conditions, but it can be a nice way of seeing how those roads manifest themselves in front of you.
With this frame of mind, fantasy can be an extremely worthwhile method of falling in love with vehicles, as it can show you the upper limits of the passion without you having to incur the expense yourself. Of course, heading to car shows, attending races or even custom workshop fairs can all help you see the beauty, craft, and tight community focused around this interest.
Celebration
Celebrating a car is a good method of developing a healthy interest in driving. It might be that you watch Top Gear or The Grand Tour, both known as the top car shows in the world. It could be that you subscribe to a magazine. It could be you read websites like ours. But you might decide to celebrate your vehicle in the smaller ways, such as cleaning out the internals, as a recreational drive is much more appealing when you haven’t fast food packaging on the drivers seat.
Road Familiarity
There’s something to be said for getting lost on the roads. There’s also something to be said for reading maps, learning the name of roads, and deciding to know your local environment like the back of your hand. The former allows you to experience the hidden streets of your city or environment, to come across towns you might never have visited, or even to uncover shortcuts. It can give you a primacy of road driving experience that is hard to outdo, namely reading the signs fully, taking whichever turn you feel like and generally exploring the city. You may even come across new routes, new views, and new hidden roads that not enough people know about. Too often we may feel trapped into the same old driving routes to and from our work, and this can get boring. Bring a GPS with you to be turned on at any time, or use your phone for good measure, and you can find your way out of ‘losing yourself’ pretty easily.
The latter allows you to experience your home environment with ease, to focus more on the scenery and not the worry of the road, and to veer away from traffic during peak times. It can be a relaxing way to drive, because you only need pay attention to road safety, knowing exactly where you’re going. To experience both is where the heart of the driving spirit lies, so in short, be sure to drive recreationally and not just for purpose. It might cost you more fuel money and a few extra miles on your radial, but the experience is priceless.
Basic Car Maintenance
Basic car maintenance is essential to enjoying the driving experience. We need to know how to check our oil levels, how to change a tyre, how to fill our windscreen wipers with cleaning fluid and correctly apply anti-freeze. But many of us don’t. If you’re reading this website as someone newly interested in cars, or you have a child learning the ropes, be sure to emphasize to yourself or those you’re responsible for how important car maintenance is. Sure, mechanics and insurance packages are there to help you out of a bind if need be, but there’s no greater reliability than learning how to take care of your car, how to maintain it and understand what certain issues or dashboard warnings mean. When you learn about something, you feel capable, and when you feel capable, you can feel responsible for something. This helps your healthy interest in driving remain. Before long you’ll be washing your car because you hope to go for the afternoon recreational drive, or keeping your internal car environment smelling and looking good no matter what.
Advanced Car Work
Advanced car work can mean all the difference when satiating your curiosity. You may wish to install a custom bodykit, new rims, or perhaps even give your car a glossy coat of paint. These can be achieved relatively easily provided you do the right research and meet the right mechanic. But you may also decide to get involved with more interesting pursuits, such as classic car restoration, taking out seats from your vehicle for more of a direct experience, adding in a new engine to your daily driver or something else entirely. If you feel that your vehicle is getting boring and you’ve done all the recreational driving you can do, this might be a good, inexpensive step before purchasing a new car. Just be sure to list any changes accurately when reporting your insurance, and be sure any changes you make you can both handle and are road worthy.
Legal Understanding
While everyone should know the rules of the road by heart, there are other legalities that can be essential to understand as a general road user. This might include how to best act when in an accident that causes no injuries but causes car damage, or perhaps how to navigate the same situation that has injuries. This might simply be through finding and saving the contact information of the best lawyers for car accident injuries. Legal understanding can also translate to how you should act if your vehicle is requested for use by law enforcement, or if you’re towed in an area that has little to suggest there were parking restrictions, or perhaps if you have been mis-fined. With adequate knowledge of the law and the correct services to back you up, you will feel more confident and careful on the roads. Not only is this topic interesting, but it’s not hard to see how you may become a better driver as a result.
Setting An Example
It’s not hard to complain about the fools we often encounter on the roads. It seems like there’s always one to avoid each time we take a trip somewhere, and sometimes they all seem out in force. However, apart from keeping clear of these drivers and reporting them where necessary, the best thing we can do is set an example. If we take pride in our driving, our driving becomes better, and we also feel more secure on the roads.
With these tips, your continuing interest in driving should help you become a much better road user, someone who justifies their presence on the road each and every day.
