Learning by Driving
If NogginLabs has a core philosophy, it’s “learn by doing.” We apply this to many different fields and topics, but if I had to come up with an easily relatable example of learning by doing, it would have to be driving.
I’m sure the driver’s education I went through is fairly similar to yours, if you’re over the age of 16: I spent a few hours in a classroom being quizzed on road signs, then moved on to a driving simulator, and finally graduated to the real thing: behind-the-wheel practice.
This is where my experience might diverge from yours. I wasn’t all that eager to learn to drive. I liked hitching rides with my brothers and being picked up by friends. As a kid, I preferred to sit in the back seat of my parents’ station wagon, staring off into space rather than watching the road. The driving lessons most people learn well before they get behind the wheel had not yet been impressed upon me. I just didn’t care, so I didn’t pay attention, which led to my weak grasp of traffic safety basics.
Nothing illustrates this better than the day my dad took me out for some practice. We were stopped at a stop sign behind a line of other cars. Each car took its turn, until finally the car in front of me cleared the stop sign and I was the first in line. Instead of stopping, I breezed on through the intersection, cutting off several cars crossing in other directions.
My dad yelled at me to pull over and when I did, demanded to know why I’d failed to stop at the stop sign. Did I not see it? No, I said—I saw it perfectly well. That wasn’t the problem. Was I not paying attention? Nope, not that either—nerves were forcing me to pay attention, for the first time, to nothing else. So what was the problem? Did I somehow not realize I was supposed to stop at a stop sign no matter how many cars ahead of me had already stopped? Oh. That was it. I did not know that. I was taking what I had observed elsewhere—cars speeding through green stoplights without pause—and transferring it to a similar situation. I had no idea there were different rules for stop signs than there were for stoplights.
Let’s just say my father looked more embarrassed than disappointed. I was embarrassed, too. I still am. (Looking back, it seems like one of those completely obvious things that everyone should know, like knowing it’s unwise to trip yourself with your own feet while walking.) But clearly, it was a lesson I had to learn by doing, and boy, did I learn it. That day didn’t just teach me about stop signs, it helped make me into the kind of driver I am now: fairly cautious, hesitant to assume I’m in the right, and oh, yeah—I try to observe all stop signs.
So what’s the larger lesson? Learning by doing can be difficult, and sometimes just embarrassing. But it can also be effective. Full stop.
Maria Parrott-Ryan
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Senior Content Producer
NogginLabs, Inc.
