47 Days and Counting

I am a P Plate driver. Thankfully only two more months to go, come August and I will no longer have the green P's on my windscreens. I will be indistinguishable from every other driver on the road.

Now, I have noticed that everything targeted at P Plate drivers says we are inexperienced, we are (sometimes) unsafe, and some of us feel invincible. The onus is on us, that we aren't good drivers.

Whilst I (mostly) don't disagree with the above comment (in a general sense), I would like to introduce the idea of;

Other drivers don't help our driving.

For example, I am driving down the highway, stop at a red light, and happen to take off faster than the car next to me when the light turns green (because they were distracted, or fixing their lippy, or telling the kids off, or on the phone)

I am driving at the speed limit, everything should be fine?

Instead, veins of rage seem to go through the brain of the driver I just passed.
Like they're going "HOW DARE THIS P PLATER OVERTAKE ME????" So they will speed up, sometimes to insane speeds, and overtake on the left (which is illegal here), only to turn two hundred metres down the road. Because they couldn't stand that me in my little red underpowered car and my P Plates beat them.

This happens a lot. And some people are like, "But Julie, these people do this to everyone! It's not just to P Platers!" But we do cop a lot of flack about our driving, and at least for a number of us, it's not true. I don't deny that I don't have the same driving experience as someone who has been driving ten or twenty years (but also, I don't have the outdated driving knowledge and bad habits that someone who has been driving that long may have).

People just seem to feel this strange need to overtake a P Plater, shout abuse at a P Plater who has accidentally stalled their car at the traffic lights, and be excellent examples of road rage. And I know I am in the minority, a twenty-something P Plater. But whilst I can ignore these twits who make my driving experience really annoying, would someone who is in their teens react the same way?

So the perpetuation of road rage continues.

47 Days and Counting.

PS: If anyone reads this :P and had a different experience as a Provisional Driver, please let me know.