r/NewDriversUK

It's been a month since my used care purchase and I went for first re-fuel and to check my tyre pressure.

It's all first, since nobody has shown me how to do all that 🙈 slightly terrified but it all went without major embarrassment 😁😇

Maybe beyond trying to do the first tyre, which took me a minute and I let too much pressure out before I figured right way of connecting (oops)... thinking- well you better get it right now, since you messed up to begin with 😆

So the tyres turned out to be all about 5PSI under, so good thing I've checked. To be honest I did notice a bit of a difference when driving after. Felt a bit crispier.

However the spare tyre was SHOCKINGLY low. 18PSI instead of 60 😱

So the question is... Should I be concerned something is wrong with it? (No visible signs of damage) or is it just because it's just been there in the boot, forgotten about for ages?

Being a new driver it’s very easy to get nervous
I got beeped at for not entering a round about quicker they had just pulled up and there was no gaps it was literal traffic. Was driving speed limit this car didn’t do anything to me but swerved around me drove off fast and went through a red light and it didn’t seem like he meant to. Just found everyone really impatient - I’m not taking the piss and going extremely slow - sticking to speed limits obviously avoiding getting into any accidents

Been tempted to put my P plates on but been doing fine without and genuinely just feel like everyone is such assholes lol

For context, I started driving late August this year. As I mentioned, I’m absolutely fine driving with a passenger - I’ve done long haul journeys, trips to the supermarket, mid haul journeys all absolutely fine but with passengers.

I’ve only done one drive on my own and that was following my dad’s car. I’m just quite nervous to drive on my own and I know this is a common theme in this community but I still would love to hear some advice.

I was driving at night for the first time on an unlit, windy, 40mph road, with my dipped headlights on whenever someone approached. Some cars coming at me were ok but to be honest a lot of them had full beams on and I could see NOTHING! I don't know if they had full beams or the new led lights? Mine are halogen. But surely they wouldn't make new lights that dangerous. I couldn't see anything! Does anyone have any suggestions? Anyone tried those night driving glasses? It's really put me off 😞

EDIT: there was no white line on the side of the road

I have been a serial lurker on this subreddit for a while, and i passed yesterday in my very 1st attempt, I am 32 years old and moved to UK 4 years ago, i have never driven in my life before learning to drive here ( so you can imagine the nerves) . Ofcourse, i did eat a banana!
My examiner was such a sweet guy, he spoke to me through the test - Mostly about Scotland ( He was scottish) , honestly that kept my nerves to minimum. I absolutely enjoyed my exam drive.
Good luck to anyone doing their driving test soon!

Ironically I just posted yesterday about getting new car bits and how excited I was to be driving and today I'm feeling wildly different lmao but we move 🤪

Drove for the first time today since passing my test literally last week in my new (old) car and felt so janky with the clutch, stalled at least 3 times in the 10 minute drive purely because it feels different to the car I learned in. Thought nothing of it till both my mum and brother briefly tried my car and started saying how easy my clutch was and now I feel stupid and like a bad driver🙃

In my mind, I know I'm not a bad driver, I'm just new and I have anxiety and various other issues. And I've only ever driven my instructors car which is wayy newer with a smoother clutch that's a little more forgiving. I know it's just about getting the practice in but yeesh what a knock to my fragile confidence😅 probably doesn't help that my mental health has been in the toilet the past few days. I'm sure a lot of people have this issue at first and I'll get over it, I just felt like whinging for a second to people who probably get it😆 I may remedy the issue by doing little laps in my car around the block during some quieter times and go from there but yeah💀

Hey guys I passed about 3 weeks ago now and straight away I got a Renault Clio. I love that car albeit it came with an android installed screen I can’t for the life of me figure out at the very least I can finally drive around anywhere I like. However I’ve been struggling with things.

It’s a smaller car compared to the ones I’ve been driving before hand. With my instructor I drove a seat Leon (btw fucking love that car) and I also used to practice drive one with my dads mate. Having gotten used to that car driving this not crazy small but smaller car I’m struggling with judging distances.

Are there any proof given methods to learn and get a sense of the dimensions and space of your car? I live in an area where your either driving between two cars hoping you don’t scrape them or your waiting forever for them to pass along so you can drive ahead.

Aswell as this how do I know things like my seating position and my mirrors are actually good? What should I be able to see in my mirrors both my side and my middle one.

Aswell as this the seats I was driving where all diesel. Although a nice car my Renault is a petrol. I didn’t think there’d be a difference but this car is stalling so easy and in a lot of situations I’ve stalled it in others start beeping and I start panicking haha.

Much love to any advice that can be given hope you all have a great day and stay safe on the roads

So I passed my test last month and recently got my first car. I have been taking it out for short drives on my own to build confidence, and today I decided to go on one that involved more time on dual carriageways. The drive was going really well, I reached the point that I had decided I would turn around and head back home.

I pulled up in the left lane at a large junction on an A road at a red light and waited until the light turned green. I drove off from the junction, and as I did so I thought I saw a flash of amber light out of the corner of my eye which obviously confused me. As I approached the light that I had followed the green from, I realised that it was slotted - I couldn't see this from the stop line as it was dark and therefore just looked like a normal green light to me when it changed.

Essentially, I am fairly sure I ran a red light by about 2 seconds. The car behind me appeared to follow me through pretty much straight afterwards, and the car to my right seemed to pull away about a second after me (although if I am right about the situation I think they went through on red + amber.)

I feel absolutely awful about this and it has really thrown me off as I could have potentially endangered someone as a result of this if things had happened differently and I didn't even know I'd done it until I'd gone across basically the entire junction. It made me so anxious to even think that it could possibly have happened.

To top it all off, while I was desperately trying to allay my worries by tracing my entire route in Streetview to find the junction and check if the lights were slotted or not, I have discovered that this junction is monitored by what I am almost certain is a red light camera.

This has tipped me completely over the edge with anxiety, which is entirely new to me as I am generally not an anxious person. I hope nothing like this ever happens to me again as long as I drive and the next two weeks are going to be hell. I feel so stupid and don't know what to do if I get points on my licence so early in my driving journey.

I've been looking at all this stuff for 3 hours now and I feel like my chest is going to explode.

I'll try and take the lessons from this and move on, but damn what a harsh introduction to the roads.

Does anyone have any tips for what I can do to calm myself down or ever experienced a similar situation?

Sometimes on NSL roads if I am unfamiliar with the road and/or it is very curvy I am not doing 60mph, more like 50-55. Oftentimes someone ends up behind me quite close and I am desperate for them just to overtake so I can continue to drive at my own pace and not stress myself out trying to drive at 60mph and keep an eye on the road and maps

Is there a common way to signal to drivers behind you to go ahead and overtake? I thought about maybe flashing hazards and left indicator, but is there some agreed upon signal?

Had my first drive with modern navigation and this is my experience:

On the way there I used waze, no problems at all. At first I thought it was overrated, it ain't all that but it got me from point A to B.

On the way back I used google maps which was okay at first..until the map randomly rotated out of nowhere and did not adjust back. I pulled over trying to fix it but it didn't work & I eventually went with waze to get back home.

Checking out more of waze features like having being able to have custom voices for navigation & other customisation features makes me see why some love waze. I'm going to stick with this for navigation now.

How has your experience been with google maps vs waze or another app for driving navigation?

Now im not talking about a safe straight road in good weather conditions because obviously i would be going up to the speed limit on those. But I work on a farm so most of the journey are narrow country lanes and honestly I feel like any faster than 35mph is dangerous on them so I don’t go any faster than that, but I notice so many other cars (usually teslas or Audis) driving an inch behind me getting annoyed. Am I going too slow?? If it’s safe to do so I find a place to pull over so they can go past but I’m wondering if I’m being too cautious. Sorry I know this is a stupid question

I passed my test about 6 months ago but only got my own car around a month ago. I've been driving locally to work, the shops etc. and that's fine, but anything longer or on roads I don't know makes me really nervous. Sometimes when I'm on my own my legs are actually shaking.

Motorways are the worst for me. Before today I'd only been on one once, with my mum. I learnt mostly with her in a dual control car so I'm used to having her there, but since passing I don't like driving with her because she doesn't help my confidence at all. Today I went with her again to drop something off at my gran's, and of course when I was merging a massive lorry came past and didn't let me in. I felt like I was really close to going into it and ended up on the hard shoulder before I could merge. Now I'm even more nervous about motorways, but I know I need to get used to them at some point.

I also struggle with satnav. When I look at the screen I feel like my steering starts drifting. Having the audio on helps, but if I'm picking up friends I might not always be able to have it on. Having friends in the car is another thing I'm worried about in general. Right now I feel like it would put me under a lot of pressure.

Parking is another one. I get scared using busy car parks in case I mess up. The other day I tried to park between two cars and it was really dodgy, I honestly thought I was going to scrape one of them.

If anyone's been through any of this, how did you get past it? Any tips for motorways (especially merging), following satnav, parking, or just dealing with the nerves in general would be really appreciated. Also I feel like I've only driven when I need to, I've not just when out for a drive for fun, would you say this would be beneficial?

I finally passed my test this year and got a car within 1.5 months of passing my test. The car buying process was exhausting in itself but the real troubles started once I started driving.

Within 3 weeks of having a car, I’d already hit someone’s car (no real damage done as I was reversing and managed to agree on a deal with the owner of that car), got a parking ticket from a space where I’m entitled for free parking and being unnecessarily beeped at some (not all) horrible miserable drivers who’d rather want me to match their level of reckless driving than to accept a 10 second delay to their destination caused by me being cautious driver. I always display a new driver sign so they can’t say I didn’t warn them.

I think it’s baffling that drivers forget that they were also once learners and new drivers.

Don’t even get me started on the chaos of dealing with stupid people blocking me in from entering or exiting my own driveway!

Having a car was always a long term goal of mine and I was always excited to be a driver. Now that I am one, it’s created a bunch of new problems I didn’t have before and I’m just starting to wonder - when does the fun start?

Hi, I’m 25(F) and I had my licence for 2 years, I think its time for me to purchase a car. However, ever since I passed I’ve never driven before and I don’t really know anyone who drives. I currently have 5k saved for an auto car, but the used cars I’m seeing on autotrader are not exactly what I expected! On the other hand I could put down a 5k deposit and get HP for a car that I’d actually enjoy driving. Like I said, since I passed I haven’t touched a steering wheel.. so if you were in my position would you get a dinger to get more familiar with roads and manuevers or get more lessons and get the car you like?

Managed to pass first time at 8:10am yesterday which I’m obviously very happy with but I can’t help but think, what if the hill start was steeper, what if I got parallel park instead of forward bay etc. Did anyone else feel like this? I’m fine with general driving but not perfect by any means. I know people say the real driving begins now.

I’ve been driving since the end of June now and still have my p plate on (only had one on and it’s honestly disintegrating from the rain and the window wiper destroying it) I feel confident and always have been (parents forced me to put it on) but I’ve came to learn how much more people are kinder on the roads, how do I get over that and become “like everyone else” as I never had it the first couple weeks and people would be horrible, overtake, honk, and I’ve not had that since. Maybe since I’ve been driving more the experience is different and I don’t deal with that? I don’t know, when I think of it in like am I maybe not as confident as I thought or am I just comfortable being in a safety net.

I was driving my Audi A3 Saloon, anyways there was a tight alleyway with a garbage can on the right and truck on the left. There was a tall skinny package at the rear of the truck propped up with one inch offset.

Anyways as I was passing (slowly) the package fell over as I steered left to avoid the garbage can.

I then turned around a few minutes later and asked the package handler if I knocked it to which he said “no”, but I asked him again are you sure he “no the package is fine, I would be more worried about your car”. I said “but I didn’t hit it, right?”, he said “no you didn’t”.

IDK what to make of this because I’ve only had a full license for 9 months already had a deer run into my car, rear ended by someone and now this.

Could someone help with this, using like my car’s proportions (A3) a small left adjustment maybe to my 10-11 o’clock after my mirror fully cleared the package with 2-3 inches.