How To Stay Calm During City Driving

City driving can be one of the most stressful experiences for a learner driver. The streets are crowded with other road users, there’s normally a lot of traffic, and there are far more pedestrians to deal with.

If you are a learner or a recently qualified driver, and you’re struggling to stay cool in a crowded urban driving environment, here are some easy-to-implement strategies to keep yourself calm under pressure. 

Choose The Right Driving Instructor

If you’re a learner driver, having a fully qualified, experienced, and competent driving instructor is essential to staying cool while driving in the city. 

While learning from a parent or friend can be beneficial, and we encourage our students to use them to get as much driving time as possible, it’s important to remember they don’t have the specialist training, knowledge, or experience of a qualified instructor.

Feeling safe, supported, and confident on the road by the people you share the car with is a great start to keeping you calm and confident while establishing good driving habits.

Get Regular Lessons

Staying calm on the road isn’t easy, especially when learning. The best way to consistently learn to stay calm behind the wheel is to spend more time behind the wheel. 

Experience and time are important for developing calmness while driving. So you’ll need to get regular lessons.

While there is no set amount of time that you should spend with an instructor, putting in a few extra hours behind the wheel is a great way to improve your skillset and get accustomed to city driving.

It’s important to note that driving lessons aren’t cheap. If you’re struggling to pay for regular lessons, be strategic with scheduling and ensure that you practice in between sessions.

Get The Right Start

Nervous drivers often struggle to relax during journeys, especially in stressful environments like city driving.  A useful technique for calming yourself is to visualize your trip. Concentrate on visualizing a calm and smooth driving experience and go through the motions of the journey in your mind. 

Once you’ve calmed down, try visualizing the mistakes you’re afraid of making. Think them through and formulate an action plan to address those mistakes. Then, if the worst does happen, you’ll already have a remedy in place.