Concentrating on Concentration

[R_U_LOCAL]

This is part of a longer chapter for the new book "How Not to Crash" - the whole chapter looks at observation skills, how to look down the road & plan for hazards, but I thought I'd stick this one up as I hadn't posted anything new in a while.

CONCENTRATION

Can you remember how much you had to concentrate when you first started driving? The simple actions involved in pressing the brake, turning the steering wheel and moving the gearlever took up pretty much all of your mental capacity. In fact, whilst you were concentrating on operating the controls, your instructor was watching the traffic and looking out for hazards on the road on your behalf.

But, with practice and experience, you probably found that you had to think less and less about controlling the car – setting off, changing gear and steering became almost second nature and you could almost carry out those simple actions without thinking about them at all. For a learner, this is the point where they can start to really concentrate on what’s happening outside the car – where to look, how to approach hazards, how fast (or slow) to drive, what’s next etc…

As drivers develop, pass their test and gain experience, that “second nature” mentality starts to creep into every aspect of their driving. As well as giving less and less thought to operating the car’s controls, they give less and less thought to how they approach junctions, vehicles and other hazards.

Driving becomes “routine” – something we do without giving it too much thought, much like many other things that we’ve done a thousand times before. Making a cup of tea, having a shower, vacuuming the carpet, sending a text – these are all actions that at one time or another we’ve had to learn and concentrate on, but over time we’ve become able to do them almost automatically without thinking.

Have you ever driven to work, or to the supermarket, or to somewhere else you drive to regularly and had absolutely no recollection of the journey? Have you arrived and suddenly thought, did I drive through a red light? Did I cut someone up in traffic? Did I lock my car? It's very common to forget the details of journeys if you’re not concentrating on your driving.

The reason you can’t remember your journey is that you’re thinking about other things – what have you got on at work today? What shopping do you need? What shall we have for tea? You’re thinking about other things all the time, because driving doesn’t really take up much of your mental capacity any more.

The difference between making tea or having a shower and driving a car is that showering and tea making don’t involve moving a ton and a half of metal at speed along a road populated by idiots in other lumps of metal also travelling at speed with cyclists, child pedestrians, animals and tractors thrown into the mix.

There are far more risks involved in driving than almost all our other daily tasks combined, but because we generally arrive at our destinations unscathed and undamaged, we don’t consider those risks and we habitually lose concentration when driving.

So how do you improve your concentration?

Firstly, remember what you’re doing. Don’t let your mind wander too far from the fact that you’re driving a car at speed in a potentially very dangerous environment. I know you might have had a bad day at work, your partner is mad with you, the kids are screaming on the back seat, you’re worried about an unexpected bill, you’re wondering what to wear tonight and your dog’s been taken ill, but it’s important to set these things aside when you get into the drivers seat.

Try this – if you’ve got a thousand things going on in your head, instead of getting in to the car, putting your seatbelt on, sticking the key in the ignition and going for first gear, try just getting into the car, shutting the door and sitting there for a few seconds – no more than 5 or 10 seconds is enough. Take that time to gather your thoughts, set your other issues aside and remind yourself you’re about to drive a car and it’ll need your full attention.

Be curious and use your imagination. Look at every junction or hazard and imagine what might go wrong. Could a car pull out on you? Might a child run out from behind those parked cars? Could that wobbly cyclist fall off in front of you? If you start to imagine what might happen, your predictions will sometimes come true. The car will pull out, the child will run out and the wobbly cyclist will fall off. Instead of being surprised by these things going wrong, if you’ve imagined them happening, you’ll be prepared and you’ll be much less likely to have an accident.

Tied in with using your imagination is the skill of making driving plans. Once you’ve started imagining what might happen, you can build on this skill by planning what you should do if those things happen. So, if that car does pull out in front of you, you’ll brake and steer round it. If a child does run out from behind the parked cars, you’ll brake and avoid them. If the wobbly cyclist does fall off, you’ll avoid hitting them (once you’ve stopped laughing, of course).

Using your imagination and making driving plans will hugely improve your ability to maintain a good level of concentration even on your most mundane, everyday journeys.

On longer journeys, it’s easy to let your concentration slip, particularly if you’re travelling for several hours on motorways, which can be quite monotonous. Take regular breaks, keep hydrated, make sure you eat regularly so that your blood sugar doesn’t drop too low and have a rest, preferably away from the car, if you start feeling tired.

There are other bars to concentration, such as mobile phones and alcohol/drugs, but I’ll cover these in a later post.

[postcode]

A quick question, is it possible to over concentrate on your journey/drive, and block out other things? I've experienced something like that, where I can tell you everything that happened outside the car, but nothing of what happened in it.

[R_U_LOCAL]

postcode said:

A quick question, is it possible to over concentrate on your journey/drive, and block out other things? I've experienced something like that, where I can tell you everything that happened outside the car, but nothing of what happened in it.

Possibly.

It's certainly an excuse I've used to avoid conversations with Mrs L on a few occasions...

[postcode]

R_U_LOCAL said:

Possibly.

It's certainly an excuse I've used to avoid conversations with Mrs L on a few occasions...

Thanks.

I suppose the entire issue of concentration whilst driving is a difficult one. I've been doing bits and pieces of driving for work recently, and I've found the levels of concentration I require to drive those vehicles is entirely different to driving my own car. I'm know my driving style is different when I'm in my own car, and I am prone to sometimes daydream in my own car, I was told by a wise man that stuff such as focussing on the road/concentration are skills that can only come with time driving. I've done the things you've mentioned doing on the approaches to junctions, but even then, I just seem to make the same mistakes time after time.. I've got less than 8 years driving experience in now, so do I need to change my attitude in order to see a change, or does it come with time?

[R_U_LOCAL]

postcode said:

Thanks.

I suppose the entire issue of concentration whilst driving is a difficult one. I've been doing bits and pieces of driving for work recently, and I've found the levels of concentration I require to drive those vehicles is entirely different to driving my own car. I'm know my driving style is different when I'm in my own car, and I am prone to sometimes daydream in my own car, I was told by a wise man that stuff such as focussing on the road/concentration are skills that can only come with time driving. I've done the things you've mentioned doing on the approaches to junctions, but even then, I just seem to make the same mistakes time after time.. I've got less than 8 years driving experience in now, so do I need to change my attitude in order to see a change, or does it come with time?

I'm not entirely sure I agree with your wise man. I think new drivers concentrate very hard out of necessity more than anything else, but the more experienced we get, the less we're inclined to concentrate hard on an activity which no longer requires our full attention, because we're comfortable with it and most of the required actions are automatic.

If you're struggling to improve, I'd always advocate some additional instruction as it can be very difficult to "self-instruct" when your actions are already subconscious.

If you'd like some further reading, try Critical Self Analysis, particularly the section on the four stages of competence, and perhaps you might find Familiarity Breeds Complacency useful too.

[Pontoneer]

R_U_LOCAL said:

This is part of a longer chapter for the new book "How Not to Crash" - the whole chapter looks at observation skills, how to look down the road & plan for hazards, but I thought I'd stick this one up as I hadn't posted anything new in a while.

CONCENTRATION

Can you remember how much you had to concentrate when you first started driving? The simple actions involved in pressing the brake, turning the steering wheel and moving the gearlever took up pretty much all of your mental capacity. In fact, whilst you were concentrating on operating the controls, your instructor was watching the traffic and looking out for hazards on the road on your behalf.

But, with practice and experience, you probably found that you had to think less and less about controlling the car – setting off, changing gear and steering became almost second nature and you could almost carry out those simple actions without thinking about them at all. For a learner, this is the point where they can start to really concentrate on what’s happening outside the car – where to look, how to approach hazards, how fast (or slow) to drive, what’s next etc…

As drivers develop, pass their test and gain experience, that “second nature” mentality starts to creep into every aspect of their driving. As well as giving less and less thought to operating the car’s controls, they give less and less thought to how they approach junctions, vehicles and other hazards.

Driving becomes “routine” – something we do without giving it too much thought, much like many other things that we’ve done a thousand times before. Making a cup of tea, having a shower, vacuuming the carpet, sending a text – these are all actions that at one time or another we’ve had to learn and concentrate on, but over time we’ve become able to do them almost automatically without thinking.

Have you ever driven to work, or to the supermarket, or to somewhere else you drive to regularly and had absolutely no recollection of the journey? Have you arrived and suddenly thought, did I drive through a red light? Did I cut someone up in traffic? Did I lock my car? It's very common to forget the details of journeys if you’re not concentrating on your driving.

The reason you can’t remember your journey is that you’re thinking about other things – what have you got on at work today? What shopping do you need? What shall we have for tea? You’re thinking about other things all the time, because driving doesn’t really take up much of your mental capacity any more.

The difference between making tea or having a shower and driving a car is that showering and tea making don’t involve moving a ton and a half of metal at speed along a road populated by idiots in other lumps of metal also travelling at speed with cyclists, child pedestrians, animals and tractors thrown into the mix.

There are far more risks involved in driving than almost all our other daily tasks combined, but because we generally arrive at our destinations unscathed and undamaged, we don’t consider those risks and we habitually lose concentration when driving.

So how do you improve your concentration?

Firstly, remember what you’re doing. Don’t let your mind wander too far from the fact that you’re driving a car at speed in a potentially very dangerous environment. I know you might have had a bad day at work, your partner is mad with you, the kids are screaming on the back seat, you’re worried about an unexpected bill, you’re wondering what to wear tonight and your dog’s been taken ill, but it’s important to set these things aside when you get into the drivers seat.

Try this – if you’ve got a thousand things going on in your head, instead of getting in to the car, putting your seatbelt on, sticking the key in the ignition and going for first gear, try just getting into the car, shutting the door and sitting there for a few seconds – no more than 5 or 10 seconds is enough. Take that time to gather your thoughts, set your other issues aside and remind yourself you’re about to drive a car and it’ll need your full attention.

Be curious and use your imagination. Look at every junction or hazard and imagine what might go wrong. Could a car pull out on you? Might a child run out from behind those parked cars? Could that wobbly cyclist fall off in front of you? If you start to imagine what might happen, your predictions will sometimes come true. The car will pull out, the child will run out and the wobbly cyclist will fall off. Instead of being surprised by these things going wrong, if you’ve imagined them happening, you’ll be prepared and you’ll be much less likely to have an accident.

Tied in with using your imagination is the skill of making driving plans. Once you’ve started imagining what might happen, you can build on this skill by planning what you should do if those things happen. So, if that car does pull out in front of you, you’ll brake and steer round it. If a child does run out from behind the parked cars, you’ll brake and avoid them. If the wobbly cyclist does fall off, you’ll avoid hitting them (once you’ve stopped laughing, of course).

Using your imagination and making driving plans will hugely improve your ability to maintain a good level of concentration even on your most mundane, everyday journeys.

On longer journeys, it’s easy to let your concentration slip, particularly if you’re travelling for several hours on motorways, which can be quite monotonous. Take regular breaks, keep hydrated, make sure you eat regularly so that your blood sugar doesn’t drop too low and have a rest, preferably away from the car, if you start feeling tired.

There are other bars to concentration, such as mobile phones and alcohol/drugs, but I’ll cover these in a later post.

Excellent post .

IMHO one of the best tools for developing and focussing concentration is commentary .

Commentary may be hard at first , but with practice becomes polished and you start looking for things to comment on , this helps with observation and planning . By trying to put into words everything you are seeing , thinking about , planning for and doing , commentary raises driving to a more conscious level and closer to the definition

"the full application of mind and body to a particular endeavour , to the complete exclusion of everything not relevant to that endeavour" .

Edited by Pontoneer on Thursday 10th September 10:12