Almost a fifth of motorists have slightly forgotten how to drive

23rd Jul, 2020

Driving a car is sort of like riding a bike – you never forget. OK, well you do sometimes. Slightly. At least according to the findings of a recent survey of the British public by manufacturer Hyundai, who quizzed 2000 drivers after the end of the extended national lockdown between March and June of this year.

Now, on average, cars in the UK are driven just short of 8000 miles a year, about 650 miles a month. Hyundai found out that between mid May and mid June 2020, the average driver covered only 90 miles, which is a reduction of something like 85%. With that much loss in practice, it’s fairly understandable that one in five (18%) say they’ve struggled to get back to normal. So, what are the biggest sticking points – and are you having any difficulty with them yourself?

What are the most common mistakes for returning drivers?

We’ll say this for Hyundai’s survey – apparently, it was pretty comprehensive. Returning drivers are having minor trouble with all sorts of stuff, from fudging common driving manoeuvres to forgetting where important components are located. Here’s the full list of the top ten mistakes, as shared by Hyundai:

1. Stalled
2. Struggled to parallel park
3. Forgot to indicate
4. Scraped wheels on kerb
5. Needing a quick think as to what each pedal does
6. Failed to check mirrors when pulling away
7. Forgot where filler cap was
8. Forgot to turn the ignition key
9. Didn’t shut the door properly
10. Not put seatbelt on

Admittedly it sounds pretty cartoonish, not to mention scary, when it’s all bundled together like that. As many as 12% of drivers (that’s about 240 of them) momentarily forgot which side they needed to fill their car, although that becomes a little more understandable when you consider that 40 of all respondents said that they hadn’t visited a filling station in a full month between mid-May and mid-June.

Out of all drivers, a significant proportion of them had made at least one of the top three mistakes:

• 28% stalled their car (about 560 people)
• 21% scraped their wheels on the kerb (about 420 people)
• 21% forgot to indicate at least once (also about 420 people – although we should say they weren’t necessarily all the same ones)

Given those sorts of figures, it’s fairly easy to see why 18% of drivers said that they had had a recent near miss with a cyclist, either as a driver or as a pedestrian.

Should we be worried about the future on British highways?

One interesting side effect of the recent lockdown is that increasing numbers of drivers across the UK noticed cleaner air and reduced pollution, and many of them committed to doing their own part in keeping things that way by resolving to cycle more. It’ll be interesting to see whether we do indeed see rising numbers of cyclists on our roads on a long-term basis, but it might go some way to explaining why about 40% of respondents to Hyundai’s survey said that they were concerned about an increase of cyclists.

What’s more, while 10% thought that people had been driving more slowly during lockdown, 44% think road users have actually been driving faster (a conclusion that matches up to our own recent post on the subject). With all that in mind, you can see why almost half of Hyundai’s respondents (48%) think that the general standard of driving will be worse now that restrictions have been lifted.

Here’s hoping they turn out to be wrong! Really, only time will tell – the best you can do until then is to make sure you drive safely, to avoid any accidents that might end with you needing to scrap your car!

But however your vehicle reaches its end – whether it’s been involved in a collision, or simply failed its MOT test, you can be sure that we’ll know exactly how to get it properly recycled here at Scrap Car Network, while getting you maximum cash for your car! All you need to do to get started is enter your car reg and postcode into the fields on our site, and we’ll have your instant online quote to you before you can say ‘scrap my car!’