Driving Practice #4

Took Evan out to country road to specifically practice checking blind spot while keeping car steady. He did pretty well.

Then we went to the freeway.

We went a good bit out of town (towards nowhere, not toward The City) until we got to a place where there were two exits about a quarter mile apart. We looped them for about half an hour. I think we made about 8 loops. On and off. On and off.

He got nervous when I told him that I could not help him judge when to merge. Given the angle of the road when I looked over my shoulder all I saw was the inside of the station wagon. Mostly the traffic was light (Sunday afternoon on the way to nowhere), but not always. Once he did it poorly, forcing tractor/trailer to change lanes to avoid killing us. Once he did it well, slowing significantly and then flooring it to get into the available spot. He apologized but I explained that was what one had to do to get onto the freeway sometimes.

On the way home we had a little confusion about which lane one is to get into when there are multiple left turn lanes. Fortunately no one was attempting to use the lane we did not belong in so we were pefectly safe while I was screaming, "Left. I said LEFT. SH*T, EVAN. LEFT. LEFT. YOU KNOW, THE OTHER LANE. WE ARE SUPPOSED TO BE IN THE LEFT LANE." "But I need to make a right turn." "Yes, but we need to stay alive!"

The thing is I keep assuming that after spending 19 years as a passenger he has learned things like that. Clearly not. I'm a pretty good teacher, but I have to figure out what I have to teach first.