If you search about good driving skills, you usually encounter confident driving as the top search result. But how critical is it for a driver to have confidence while on the road? Does having confidence mean never having to encounter a car crash, damage property or injure others?
While there is much clamor for driving with confidence as the ultimate guarantee to safety, perhaps we need to validate the incessant fears and reservations that never depart from even the most experienced driver.
When someone drives for the first time, the fear is there – strong and true. Competence level is basically at the lowest of low in neophyte drivers, and there is a huge possibility of crashing, scratching the car or worse.
According to a study, it takes three years for an average driver to feel confident. Now this is a very long time. But driving can be learned as quickly as a few minutes, depending on the learner. Some people have to take driving lessons for weeks or months even just to overcome their fears and gain confidence behind the wheel.
If an average driver takes years to be fully confident behind the wheel, does it mean that between the first day and the thousandth day (three years), an average driver is an incompetent or unreliable one?
There is a thin line between confidence and overconfidence, and for the most part, having that slight amount of fear makes people cautious and defensive with their driving. Absent that bit of fear and that person is likely to just start driving carelessly and mindlessly. Without fear, there is no reservation whatsoever.
An average person driving for the first three years of his life may have a shot at being a competent driver but not a confident driver. One can never be over-competent, but one can easily slide from being confident to being overconfident.
When fear keeps a driver in tab about his role in traffic – that his safety and those around him rests in his hands – it becomes beneficial to have that fear and to not be fully confident. This renders having 100 percent confidence behind the wheel a miscalibration for measuring a person’s driving skills. It may be better to be a competent driver than a confident (overconfident) one.
