Back to Driving School Basics for Drivers Learning to Drive

New drivers often take driving lessons when they are learning to drive. Most of the skills are put into everyday driving and become part of a good driver’s skill set. Other skills are often promptly forgotten once drivers have their license in handed their license.

Some have the chance to brush up on all the skills they have learned years earlier—some are required by employers and some just need it to get a chance to dismiss a ticket. No matter what the reason is, going back to driving school is easy if you can do it online for cheap. There are quite a lot of options on the internet, including the 5 dollar traffic school that offers a very affordable price for their courses.

You might not need to enroll in a traffic school, but re-learning and remembering important driving basics can also help you. The following are some necessary but often forgotten driving skills that every driver should brush up on.

The Two-Second Rule

It is very unnerving to look in your rear view mirror while traveling at highway speeds and see the vehicle behind you so close you can’t see its headlights. Yet while tailgating is often a pet peeve when other drivers do it to us, most drivers have done it themselves at one point or another when they are in a hurry. Following too closely makes stopping suddenly more dangerous.

The two-second rule is taught in driving school as a way to gauge the distance to the vehicle in front of you. A driver looks for a stationary object by the roadside and watches when the car you are following passes the object. Once it passes, you start counting by one thousand and stop when you pass the same object. If you are two one thousands behind the vehicle in front of you are following at a safe distance.

The Wheels on the Hill

Parking on a hill is a skill that is easily forgotten if you live and drive somewhere flat. All new drivers at traffic school  are taught the correct way to place the wheels of their vehicles when parking in both an uphill and downhill position. When I moved to a very hilly area, I realized I had forgotten which way my wheels were to turn when parked on a hill. When parking down a hill, turn the wheels to the far right so that if your car rolls it rolls towards the curb. When parking up a hill, turn the wheels to the far left so that if it rolls down the hill, the front wheels hit the curb. Always use the parking brake when parking on a hill.

Parallel Parking

If you live in a very busy urban area, parallel parking is a must-have skill. But if you live outside of the city, most probably, you will drive for blocks to avoid parallel parking. Parallel parking strikes fear into many drivers because they don’t remember what they learned in driving school and have not had many opportunities to practice it. It is impossible to drive into a parallel spot. You must pull ahead of the spot and back into it.

Pull up next to the car you are parking behind and start backing up and turning your steering wheel to the left. When your steering wheel is all the way left and when the bottom of your windshield aligns with the bumper of the car in front, continue backing up while turning your steering wheel all the way right.