Succeeding in many aspects of life is not just about your skills and aptitude but also your mindset, and learning to drive is no different.

Whilst it is vital to take driving lessons to build up your skills, confidence and experience behind the wheel, the greatest virtues that will help you to continue safely driving for life are as much about mentality and attitude as they are technical skills and reflexes.

Mindset is how you apply the skills you have developed, how you judge where to position your car on the road, when a space in traffic is big enough for you to move into, and when to give way to a driver ahead and when to know if someone has done the same for you.

Can you develop your driving mentality in the same way you can cultivate your driving skills? Absolutely, and to understand why, it is important to know why mindset matters and which skills are most essential for safe driving for life.

Why Do Mentality And Attitude Matter For Driving Safely?

Because driving is such an everyday activity, it is often underappreciated just how cognitively and emotionally taxing it can be, which makes your mindset more important than you might expect.

With reaction times so important, stress can double your reaction times and require you to fall back on your expertise and instinctual skills.

As well as this, a fundamental part of driving is responding to the actions of strangers, which can create pressure and stress that forces out our most fundamental and subconscious selves.

 

How we feel shapes how we act, and the more we can shape how we feel when we are behind the wheel, the safer we will be as a driver.

What Are The Most Important Traits For A Driver To Have?

Thankfully, the most important traits can be cultivated through practice and experience on the road, and many of them will be developed naturally as you build up skills and become more comfortable on the road.

Here are some of the most important emotional skills and mental virtues to develop and cultivate in order to be an exceptional driver.

Responsibility

A truly great driver takes accountability for their actions and will drive accordingly. Every choice has an effect on all of the road users around us, and there is a legal expectation that you will pay due care and attention to other road users.

If you delay your turn, it has an effect on everyone behind you, but rushing to join a particular lane, undertaking or running a yellow light not only can potentially be illegal but it can also force other road users to react around you.

Concentration

Beyond being vital for passing your hazard perception test, concentration and focus are key for identifying potential everyday developing dangers as well as the opportunities to safely find opportunities to overtake, change lanes and turn at junctions without dangerous pauses.

Everyone has a different way to focus, but learning to drive in a way that is comfortable and reduces mental strain whilst also avoiding distractions is vital not only to pass your test but when driving in the future.

Proactivity

Whilst it is important to be responsive and reactive to hazards that rapidly emerge, it is similarly vital that you are aware of your position on the road, other road users and the conditions that could affect your ability to stop in an emergency.

Learning defensive driving techniques can help give you the time and space you need to maintain control of your vehicle and react as swiftly as you need to.

Patience And Consideration

Once you have learned the basics of driving and how to comfortably pull off more advanced techniques such as hill starts, reversing around corners and safe parking techniques, a core of your practice and learning will be about driving whilst considering everyone around you.

Caring about the road users around you necessitates patience and keeping your attention focused not only on what is ahead of you, but also to the side and behind you using your mirrors.

Ultimately, if you are using techniques such as mirror – signal – manoeuvre taught during your driving lessons, you are also building your soft skills of patience and consideration.

Many of the skills involved with driving are about replacing the instinct to act quickly with the ability to act with intent, plan ahead and prepare for the risks involved not only with other drivers, but pedestrians, cyclists, animals and emergency services.

Emotional Intelligence

A throughline for many of the soft skills needed to be a safe driver revolves around empathy; you need to be conscious of and see the road from the point of view of other road users in order to ensure your actions whilst driving do not put them in danger.

For example:

• Drivers of vans and heavy goods vehicles may have lower visibility and much larger stopping distances due to the heavier loads.
• Pedestrians, particularly children, older people and people with mobility issues may be slower crossing the street and require careful observation to ensure you can brake in time.
• Cyclists are sometimes difficult to spot due to being slower and quieter than other road users.
• Motorcyclists can sometimes ride closer to your car than you might expect.
• Animals are difficult to predict and can sometimes run into the street without warning.
• Emergency vehicles with sirens blaring drive faster than the speed limit, and you need to get out of the way quickly.

As well as this, emotional intelligence is understanding the difference between confidence and arrogance. 

Whilst nerves and timidity are a leading cause of driving test failures, overconfidence can lead to a reckless driving style that can itself be harmful.

Willingness To Learn

Ultimately, successful safe driving is a learning process, and having a willingness to practice your skills until they become second nature and to evaluate how you reacted in certain situations for what you did right and what you can improve upon will help you be a safer driver.

In some respects, even the humility of understanding that every driver has room to learn and build their skills further will help ground your understanding of your own abilities and limitations, avoiding the dangers that come from the Dunning-Kruger effect.