Driving with Douglas

I'm scared of a great many things, snakes, heights, really small places where I can't lift my arms, deep and meaningful conversations... but the one thing that scares me more than many of those things is driving with my father. During the time that I was on my L's my dad was very insistent that I learn how to drive properly and safely. He even made me read a few books on safe driving techniques (I think he may even have quized me on them). I even remember one afternoon where he made me reverse around a car park for at least half an hour so that I could do it well, man did my clutchn' foot hurt after that one. When I got my license, that birthday I received a voucher for a defensive driver training course from my dad because he wanted me to be a safe driver. I learned the basics of how my car would act in varying situations and how to act safely on the road, which was all great, a very good gift for a new driver indeed. I was also encouraged to complete and off road driver training course, which I did and that was great. all up my dad wanted me to be a safe and cautious driver.

So why, I query, is driving with my dad at the wheel often such a frightful experience? I have a memory from some family holiday of my dad over taking several cars around a corner on double un-broken lines. Which to me back then was perfectly normal. I mean everyone's dad drives like that right? Just tonight as we were traveling to the gym for our weekly pump fest, we were speeding, tailgating, doing risky lane changes and taking some very small gaps. If we were in a hurry this may have made sense, but we weren't, so it seems quite unnecessary to take such risks and endanger the live of others for a trivial time gain. We were almost in an accident and I was constantly pushing my right foot into the floor looking for a brake pedal that wasn't there. I remember once in high school I was at a friend's house and we wanted to go to the shops, so we got my mates brother to drive us. He drove your typical bogan HSV commodore so a mere drive to the shops consisted of multiple power slides, burnouts and a top speed that exceeded 100km/h. The thing was I didn't notice, I was too busy thinking how much I hated the nelly song playing on the CD player. My mate was most surprised when he asked me what I thought of the drive I had no idea what he was talking about. For me it was just a regular drive. I'm not saying my father is a drastically speeding, burnout doing bogan, but it's not uncommon to here those tires squeal from time to time. Mostly I've just taken to accepting that fact that he's never actually BEEN in an accident ever so I'll probably be fine... probably...