2:50pm August 30, 2014

question for y’all: driving

slashmarks:

realsocialskills:

Anonymous said to realsocialskills:

I want some information about people with autism and driving. Google helps me with NOTHING about info from actual autistic people, of whatever age and driving level, on their experiences. -.- as usual

realsocialskills said:

I don’t drive, because thus far I have not figured out a way to do it safely. I have unreliable motor skills and weak spatial reasoning and poor executive function. These have all caused me trouble in my various attempts to learn to drive safely. I think I probably could learn to compensate for this kind of impairment with sufficient support, but I don’t want to learn driving through trial and error because error could involve crashing cars and killing people.

Have any of y’all who’re autistic or otherwise disabled learned to drive safely? How?

I’m in the process of learning to drive (have driven on the road in traffic, so I’m getting towards functional) and I don’t seem to be having any particular problems. According to my mother, I’m learning slightly faster than average.

On the other hand, I also don’t have the poor spatial reasoning that can come with autism, and my motor skill problems are specifically ones that wouldn’t cause a problem in driving (you don’t need a lot of really fine motor control to control a car). My main related issues are just executive functioning. The big thing that helps with that is having someone in the seat next to you telling you what you’re doing, so you can focus on all the things involved in safe driving and not where you’re going or what turn to take next. I’m hoping I’ll get better at doing both at the same time as I practice more.

I’ve known other autistic people who could drive with no problems, so I think this is something that probably depends a lot on what autistic traits you have.

Yeah it would defiantly depend on not only which skills/issues you have but also how you are able to use them.

For example about 50% of my friends are incapable of driving for primarily just having horrible anxiety. I have pretty bad anxiety too but for some reason it’s not a big issue for me and driving?

it’s actually more like the opposite because the anxiety basically tells me “no one is paying attention they will hit you” so I assume everyone is going to run stop signs, cut me off etc. which ends up probably resulting in me being a safer driver because every time someone DOES run a sign or cut me off I am expecting it.

Focus is another thing. I actually kind of have trouble if someone else is in the car talking to me, but if not driving is one of basically two things (the other one is drawing) that I can actually channel my brain into focusing on just the one thing without distractions.

Another thing to consider is the actual car you are driving matters a lot. Like I hate driving mom’s big fat crossover suv because the rear is wider than the front and it makes parking an maneuvering.

My car on the other hand is this

check the distance from the wheels to the bumpers. The tactile feedback from the car is mostly through the wheels so it is REALLY EASY to maneuver in comparison to a car with a large hood or trunk. The suspension also matters because if you have something with soft floaty suspension it’s kinda like trying to move around when you can’t really feel your body. Also I have no idea why they put distracting crap like touchscreens in cars now which can really mess you up. Stuff like this makes driving a lot harder but for some reason it never comes up despite it being a safety concern.

(obviously “get a different car” isn’t a really reasonable option but it’s worth keeping stuff like that in mind if you have a choice)

I’m autistic, and so is my brother. But as I’ve said many times before, on any given autistic trait, if one of us has that trait, the other one has the exact opposite. I can’t drive, and should never drive. My brother drives, although his driving style is a little awkward because of dyspraxia. He learned to drive later than most people learned to drive, too: I think he was about 25.

I would actually like to know the basics of how to operate a car. Not because I could or should ever be behind the wheel. But because I can foresee possible emergency situations where being able to operate a car, despite the utter hazard I would be to myself and everyone else on the road, would be less hazardous than not operating the car. (Like if I were stuck in the middle of nowhere during a major crisis situation and needed to get somewhere fast, and the highway was totally deserted.)

Anyway, my reasons for not driving are:

My visual perception sucks so badly that at times it’s like being functionally blind. At my best, I still often fail to see large moving objects, such as, you know, cars. And pedestrians. And cyclists. At my worst, everything just looks like pixels.
I’m epileptic. Enough said. (This alone means that I’m not allowed to get a driver’s license.)
I have autistic catatonia. I don’t think freezing up in the middle of driving would work very well. And even the aspects of autistic catatonia that aren’t as severe as completely freezing, would cause problems for driving.
I’m not good at multitasking. Driving requires a lot of multitasking. It requires perceiving things, responding to them, directing your body to do all kinds of things at once. Even driving a motorized wheelchair was really exhausting for me for that reason. I can’t imagine driving a large vehicle where any little mistake could cost lives.

I have severe motor and sensory issues associated with autism that, even without the epilepsy, would pretty much make driving impossible. If your motor and sensory and multitasking issues are not as severe, and you’re not epileptic, then you have a greater chance of being able to successfully learn to drive. My brother has mild sensory issues and probably moderate dyspraxia and he’s able to drive okay. The dyspraxia does make it harder for him, though, and you can tell by the way the car moves that he has somewhat awkward motor skills. But it’s not bad enough that he’s a hazard on the road or anything, like I would be. I tell people I’m doing them a favor by staying out from behind the wheel – and it sounds like a joke but I’m 100% serious. I could kill people if I got behind the wheel and I take that extremely seriously. If you think that your driving would be bad enough to cause accidents, then you shouldn’t drive, period.

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