Driving tips for supervisors
Gaining experience and avoiding hazards
Gain experience
In the early stages, start driving in zero to little traffic. Focus on developing your learner driver’s ability to safely control the vehicle. Some questions you might consider running through with your learner driver:
- Are they seeing and reacting to other road users by watching for traffic (back, front and sides) and using mirrors
- Can they drive in a straight line and keep left?
- Can they accelerate, brake, reverse, and take corners smoothly?
- Can they operate the gears and steering wheel correctly (if applicable)?
- Are they using their indicators where necessary?
- Are they keeping a safe distance from other vehicles?
- Do they know the speed limit of the road they are on?
Once your learner has mastered all the basic skills, they need to get practice in a variety of conditions. This will allow them to develop all driving skills necessary to become a safe driver. It is important that learner drivers also have lots of time to practice safe driving in a supervised environment. This means that in conjunction with their learning, they can form good habits.
We recommend working through the following tasks with your learner driver in a variety of conditions:
- adjusting speed to suit traffic and road conditions
- obeying traffic signs, including speed limits and speed limit changes
- scanning the road and traffic to recognise and anticipate the behaviour of other road users, including other cars, cyclists, motorcyclists and pedestrians
- correctly handling roundabouts and complex intersections
- reversing and parallel parking
- doing U-turns
- doing hill starts
- merging safely.
It’s important that your learner driver also understands how to safely share the road with others. Teach them to be aware of their own vehicle, and understand how to safely interact with others.
- Motorcycles: watch for motorcyclists – they are smaller and more difficult to see than other traffic
- Heavy vehicles: be aware of the driver’s blind spots and that they need more room to stop (adjust following and overtaking distances accordingly)
- Buses: may be stopping frequently and pedestrians may be about
- Bicycle riders: be aware of bicycle riders and leave the required distance while passing
- Pedestrians: take care around pedestrians and check speeds when pedestrians are about, e.g. in school zones and times, around shopping precinct (also remember that children and young people may behave unpredictably)
Avoiding hazards
Being able to perceive and avoid hazards is essential to becoming a good driver. This is an important part of your learner driver’s driving experience.
There are 3 key steps to developing good hazard perception skills:
Scan > Recognise > Respond
As your learner gets more experience in driving more independently, ensure they increase their ability to complete these steps.
Step 1: Scan
The first step to good hazard perception is being able to identify risks by scanning the environment. The best way to develop your learner drivers’ hazard perception is to describe potential and actual hazards, and then provide them with lots of on-road driving experience.
Start with a commentary drive. Talk to your learner about where you look. Start by pointing out the hazards while you are parked. Next, have your learner driver point out hazards while you are driving.
When your learner driver is behind the wheel, ask them to describe possible hazards while they are scanning. It is your job to alert them to any they might miss. Remember to teach them to look beyond the car in front, and scan the entire road environment.
This discussion helps your learner driver form good driving habits by continuously scanning the road environment.
Step 2: Recognise
Your learner driver needs to be able to recognise the difference between potential hazards and hazards they need to respond to.
A hazard can be any potential source of danger on or near the road that could lead to a crash. It can come from any direction.
By continuing to discuss this with your learner driver and helping them identify any hazards, you’ll increase their awareness and ability to respond quickly.
Step 3: Respond
By learning to recognise a hazard early, your learner driver can make well-informed decisions on the safest way to respond.
For example, by noticing a vehicle that’s slowing down and indicating 3 or 4 vehicles ahead, they can adjust their speed before the vehicle directly in front has even applied their brakes.
Having time to make decisions can be the difference between responding safely and having a crash.
In this guide:
- Preparing to be a supervisor
- Planning a lesson
- Gaining experience and avoiding hazards
- Moving on to P plates