As learner drivers, you will progress from not having much understanding about how to drive a car, to being at test standard, passing your driving test and then being a driver for life. How this happens is through teaching, either with an instructor or family/friends, practice, time and many other factors. As you learn to drive and become a more experienced driver, you’re probably not aware of when you suddenly become competent with using all the controls correctly, while doing everything else you have to do as a driver. Hopefully this article will provide some understanding on how this happens and the different stages of competence you go through.
As driving instructors, our task is to provide you with the following:
- Competencies to know what to do, when to do it, how and why
- Consistency to make sure you continue with the competencies at a high level
- Confidence to ensure you can apply the competencies to any driving situation.
With regards to your driving competency, it is widely recognised there are 4 stages of competence, commonly referred to as the learning ladder or cycle of development.
1. Unconscious incompetence
This can be summarised as “knowing nothing about it” or “not knowing what you don’t know”. Before we learn to drive, most of us are aware of what a car does but are unaware of various controls or features like adaptive cruise control or lane control assist.
2. Conscious incompetence
This can be summarised as “knowing what to do, just don’t know how to do it”. This is where most learner drivers will start if they have never driven a car before – we all started here at some point as drivers. You know the car moves and keeps us safe and warm, yet you have no idea what to do or how to do it. That’s OK, that’s what instructors are here to teach you and it’s a good starting point.
3. Conscious competence
This can be summarised as “knowing what to do and how to do it, yet it takes effort and having to think about it”. As you continue learning to drive, you will become more familiar with the controls of the vehicle, looking out for potential hazards and how to react to them if they develop. There is still a lot of thought involved while doing this, and it takes effort and practice to remember what to do and how, when and why.
4. Unconscious competence
This can be summarised as “knowing what to do and how to do it without thinking about it”. There are other phrases used to identify this stage of competence – muscle memory, second nature, instinct, automatic, just knowing etc. All these are valid and come from somewhere, which is experience, previous skills and time etc. This stage is useful as we don’t want to be spending too much of our time thinking about everything we do. If we spend too much of our time and focus in this stage, mistakes can happen.
How many times have you asked yourself the following questions?
- Did I lock my front door?
- Did I lock my car?
- Did I turn off the oven/hob?
- Did I turn off the lights/blow out the candle?
These are activities you complete multiple times each and every day and the likely answer is ‘yes’, you actually did. So why didn’t you remember doing it? It’s because it’s such a regular activity, you just did it without having to think about it. There is a common thread here, which is safety. The consequence of a ‘no’ for the above questions can be unsafe and potentially disastrous if not checked and the same can be true for driving. Did you notice every pedestrian crossing, traffic light, crossroads etc. on your last drive?
Assumptions could also get made when spending too much time in this stage. You are likely to be doing the same journey at the same time of day for employment, education or whatever, so unconsciously you “know the road like the back of your hand”. However, every journey could be different due to the environment, other road users or other factors you have no control over. You have to be ready for and alert to these changes, and therefore make conscious decisions to remain safe.
The real skill here is to make use of both conscious and unconscious competence. Your feet and hands controlling the pedals, steering wheel and the other car controls can be at the unconscious competence level – you know what to do and how to do it without thinking about it. Your hands and feet can then react instinctively and automatically to the driving decisions you make by operating the brake, clutch, gas pedal, steering wheel etc. Reading the road, your communication to other road users and the observations you make should operate at the conscious competence level I.E. you need to think about what you are doing rather than doing the same thing over and over again automatically.
Everyone is different, and you will progress through the different stages of competence as a driver at your own pace, so don’t worry if you don’t feel like you’re not making much progress on lessons. You are, you’re just probably not aware of it. As instructors, we will guide your progress through your competencies at a pace that works for both of us and take you on a step-by-step learning journey.
To start with, learning how to control a car might seem like a daunting prospect with all the pedals, buttons, levers and switches we could use. Very soon, you will be using all these without much effort, while being able to talk to your passengers, sing along to your favourite tunes while being in control of your car, managing the children in the back of the car etc. all while making safe and appropriate driving decisions.
