[ajayon]

Hi all,
I had one of those moments during my third driving lesson today. My instructor asked me to reverse into a bay at the supermarket car park. Sounds simple, right?
I started lining it up, felt pretty confident... then suddenly a car zooms past right behind me — didn’t even notice it coming. I slammed the brake, my instructor grabbed the wheel (lightly), and I just sat there thinking, “Welp, I’ve failed driving forever.” 😅
Turns out I wasn’t even that far off, but my nerves went through the roof.
Has anyone else had a small moment like that that felt huge at the time? Did it get better for you?
Would love to hear your early lesson stories — make me feel less alone in my chaos 😂

[olduser]

With hind sight, I say I was lucky to be driving tractors, off road, from about 10 -11 yrs old, lessons were learned often the hard way.

The lesson for you would be, no matter what you are doing when driving it's up to you to be sure it's safe to do so before you start and while you are doing it.
In practice you have to keep a lookout for what's going on around you at all times.

Just because you are reversing, there is no compulsion for others to give way to you, you must give way to them.
Your instructor should be telling you to partially turn in your seat to look rearwards, this leaves you able to keep an eye out sideways using peripheral vision.

As to getting into the parking space, it's just practice, and more practice, the novelty is you are seeing what happens at the back when you move the steering at the front, for the first time.

After a while getting into a car will be like putting an overcoat on, you subconsciously allow for the extra width of the coat, and avoid brushing everything as you pass.

Try and enjoy it!