And you a cyclist?
* Drive further to the centre of the road, and away from the bicycles then! The oncoming traffic very rarely goes out of its way to drive into you, because they have insurance bills too. And even if they do, unlike a pushbike you're extremely well protected inside the car cage.

* Learn the width of your vehicle. It's a lot less wide than you think, often half the width of your lane - use the car in front of you to see that, most cars are pretty similar width.

* You only need to glance at the speedo for a speed check, not spend 10 seconds reading it. Learn the angle that shows 30 (40,70), and don't panic if you see 31 (41,71).

* You don't even need to rev the engine to pull away from stationary. Next time you're trying starting on the flat, just leave your foot off the accelerator, and slooowly release the clutch. You'll crawl away quite happily.

* From that, learn where the clutch "bite" point is. It's usually the third quarter of the clutch pedal's lift, and you don't need to press the accelerator before it stars biting. Lift the clutch slowly and you can feel it connect and won't stall - then you can start pushing the accelerator.

* Stalling the engine doesn't hurt anything! Don't panic.

* Overreving the engine to breaking isn't possible, there are limiters and it takes ages even if there weren't. Burning out the clutch is near impossible, *unless* you spend all your time over a year or so overrevving the engine while riding the clutch! So don't worry about them.

Your driving instructors have been rubbish if they can't drill any of this into you. Get a better one and take a couple of proper lessons in pedal control and steering, don't rely on friends/family to get you started. They're as shit at driving as everyone else on the road.
( Fronds are waving gently on, Mon 26 Apr 2010, 10:51, Reply)