Many parents of students attending EnCircle Education classes question whether or not their adolescent or young adult son or daughter can learn to drive a car. Historically, most of our students who’ve obtained a driver’s license have done so later in life. We believe that learning to drive for most students is possible but like many things; our students may just need more time to master the skills involved in driving a car and these skills may need to be learned one skill at a time.
When a motor skill like driving is being learned all people have to consciously think about the parts involved, steering and braking, etc. During this phase of motor learning the brains frontal cortex is very active. When a skill such as driving or steering becomes fully learned the person no longer has to think about performing the sequential steps involved. Steering the car becomes automatic and conscious thinking about how to do it is no longer required. At this point the frontal cortex is no longer activated. The motor cortex takes over when a skill is fully learned and the skill is executed unconsciously.
Experts recommend that the process of steering, breaking and otherwise operating a car be fully learned to “motor automatic” stage before permitting anyone to drive in any amount of traffic. This helps solve the multi-tasking requirements involved with driving and frees up the frontal cortex to concentrate on traffic, rather than the operation of the car itself. If an individual can ride a bike safely and reliably obey the traffic rules, he or she can probably learn to drive a car. Practice with bikes, golf carts, trikes, or other toy vehicles is helpful.
It’s also good to consider where an individual is at and start there. Does the person have the maturity level and judgement to drive a car? Are they careful to follow the rules given to them? How do they react under pressure? These factors need to be assessed on a case-by-case basis to determine if an individual is up to the challenge of driving a vehicle when an individual is allowed extra time to learn the basic operation of the car and the individual skills involved in driving .
After each driving skill becomes fully learned and integrated with the other skills, they can slowly progress to driving a real vehicle with more and more traffic, higher speeds, more frequent stops, or areas where there is a greater chance for different events to occur (for instance driving in neighborhoods with a lot of children or a a high concentration of business establishments with cars pulling in and out of parking spaces regularly.) Lastly nighttime driving should likely be avoided until the student is very comfortable with all aspects of daytime driving.
The best question a parent might consider is not necessarily CAN my Neurodivergent Son or Daughter learn to drive; but instead are they ready to drive a car? We believe that many of our students participating in our Driving Simulation Classes are proving that they are indeed ready!