I'm teaching my 16 year old son how to drive. A couple of months ago, we were driving to Chicago to visit colleges. Traffic got very light on I-65 between Indianapolis and Chicago. I decided this would be a great chance to give my son his first experience driving on a highway.
But I wondered what coaching to give him before I'd let him hurtle down the highway at 65 mph. I'd been reading in the book "Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength" by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney that it is exhausting to make lots of conscious decisions. Once you get exhausted, you start to make mistakes. I knew that my son has not yet had time to develop good driving habits. He doesn't yet do anything on "auto-pilot". How could I simplify his decision making so that we'd make it to Chicago alive?
First, I told him to be antisocial. "Keep your distance from all the other cars. Drive for space. If someone keeps driving right next to you, speed up or slow down until you have space around you."
Next, I passed on the wisdom of the late, great comedian George Carlin who is pictured above. In his classic "Idiots and Maniacs" routine, George said, "Have you ever noticed that everyone driving slower than you is an IDIOT! And everyone driving faster than you is a M-A-N-I-A-C!!!!!" See this clip on You Tube: Idiots and Maniacs.
I told my son, "Keep your distance, and watch out for idiots and maniacs. When the maniacs come racing up behind, look for a chance to let them pass you. And when an idiot in front of you makes you slow down to a crawl, look for a chance to pass them."
A simple enough strategy, but I waited until I knew he could tell the difference between an idiot and a maniac before I pulled into a Rest Area and handed him the car keys.
No comments:
Post a Comment