Nervous or Anxious Drivers

There is no single reason why somebody might feel nervous or anxious about driving.

You may be worried because everything is new. You might dislike the feeling of being responsible for a car, worry about making a mistake or feel uncomfortable when other drivers are close behind you.

You may feel perfectly comfortable in some situations but struggle with others. Roundabouts, faster roads, narrow roads, parking, busy town centres or driving somewhere unfamiliar can all create different demands.

Previous experiences matter too. You may have been involved in or witnessed a collision, stopped driving for a long time, had an unsuccessful driving test or had lessons that left you feeling uncomfortable or under pressure.

Sometimes it is difficult to identify one particular cause.

Your instructor does not need to diagnose why you feel anxious. What is useful is understanding when it happens, what seems to make it better or worse and how it affects your driving.

That gives you something practical to work with.

Yes, if you are comfortable doing so.

You do not need to provide a detailed explanation or use any particular terminology. Something as straightforward as “I'm worried about roundabouts”, “I panic when cars get close behind me” or “I had a difficult experience with my previous instructor” gives your instructor useful information.

If you are generally anxious about starting lessons and cannot identify anything more specific, you can say that too.

A conversation before or during your first lesson can help your instructor understand your starting point. They can then consider the environment, level of support and amount of challenge that is appropriate rather than guessing what you need.

You can also tell them when something changes. What feels manageable at the beginning of a lesson may feel different later, and something that worried you several weeks ago may eventually stop being a significant concern.

There are several things an instructor can change without removing the opportunity for you to learn.

They might initially choose a less demanding environment, give you more time to process information, demonstrate something before asking you to try it or provide more support while a situation is unfamiliar.

The important part is seeing what happens next.

If an approach helps you understand and manage the situation, you can begin building on it. The instructor can gradually reduce their support or introduce more complexity as you become able to manage more for yourself.

If it does not help, simply repeating the same experience may not be useful. Your instructor can look at what is causing the difficulty and change the approach.

That might mean changing the explanation, breaking something down differently, adjusting the environment or temporarily returning to something more familiar before trying again.

The purpose of adapting a lesson is not to keep driving permanently easy. It is to create conditions in which useful learning can take place.

Tell your instructor.

You are not failing the lesson by saying that something has become too much.

Depending on what is happening, your instructor may be able to provide additional support while you continue, reduce the demands of the situation or find somewhere appropriate to stop and give you time to reset.

Once things are manageable, it can be useful to look at what actually happened.

Was there too much information at once? Did something happen that you were not expecting? Were you unsure what another road user was going to do? Did you understand what was required but struggle to put it into practice?

Finding the difficulty is often more useful than simply deciding that you cannot cope with that situation.

It also helps determine what happens next. Sometimes the right decision will be to try again with more support. Sometimes it will make sense to practise a particular skill elsewhere first. At other times, you may discover that you managed more of the situation than it initially felt like you did.

A driving instructor should not simply push you into situations you are not ready to manage.

Equally, learning to drive eventually involves dealing with situations that may initially feel uncomfortable.

If every road, manoeuvre or situation that causes anxiety is permanently avoided, you may have fewer opportunities to develop the skills needed to manage it independently later.

The challenge is finding an appropriate step between avoiding something completely and attempting too much too soon.

For example, if a particular type of roundabout worries you, the answer does not necessarily have to be either avoiding roundabouts or immediately tackling the busiest one available. You might first improve the underlying observations, positioning or decision-making involved, practise in a more manageable environment and then increase the challenge as your ability develops.

You should understand why you are being asked to try something and be able to talk to your instructor about the level of challenge.

The aim is not to prove that you can tolerate being frightened. It is to help you develop the knowledge, skills and experience that can make the situation more manageable.

Starting with somebody new does not mean starting again.

A new instructor can establish what you can already do, where you currently need support and what you would like to develop. You may have strong skills in some areas even if your previous lessons affected your confidence in others.

It can help to explain what did not work for you previously, particularly if there are things you would prefer the new instructor to approach differently.

That does not necessarily mean the previous instructor was a bad instructor. Sometimes communication or teaching approaches do not work particularly well for a particular learner. Sometimes expectations differ. In other cases, there may have been a specific experience that affected how comfortable you felt during lessons.

What matters now is establishing a working relationship in which you can communicate openly and continue developing from your current level.

Mistakes are part of learning something that you cannot yet do independently.

That does not mean mistakes are ignored. Driving has real consequences, and your instructor has a responsibility to manage risk while you learn.

It does mean you are not expected to perform everything perfectly while developing a new skill.

When something goes wrong, your instructor can help you understand what happened. Perhaps you noticed something too late, misunderstood the situation, struggled with the controls or simply had too much to process at once.

Once you understand the reason, you have something useful to work on.

If you become so concerned about making a mistake that you are afraid to make decisions at all, tell your instructor. Learning to make decisions, assess what happened and adjust when necessary is an important part of becoming an independent driver.

Not necessarily.

Confidence and ability are related, but they are not the same thing.

You can feel nervous about doing something and still demonstrate that you understand it and can manage it safely. You can also feel very confident about something that still needs development.

Your progress should therefore be based on more than how confident you feel.

As your driving develops, useful signs of progress include recognising situations earlier, making more decisions yourself, needing fewer prompts and being able to apply what you have learned in different environments.

There may also be occasions when something you previously managed feels more difficult. Heavier traffic, unfamiliar roads, poor weather or simply a more demanding situation can change how much you have to process.

That does not automatically mean you have gone backwards. It may show that you are now applying your skills under different conditions.

It is normal for an important assessment to create some nerves.

The practical driving test also changes the situation you are used to. Your instructor is no longer sitting beside you in their normal role, an examiner is assessing your driving and you know that the result matters to you.

Good preparation cannot guarantee that you will feel completely calm on the day.

DVSA's Ready to Pass guidance includes having practised ways of managing your nerves as one of the signs that you are usually ready to take the test.

If you can already drive safely and independently in different situations, make your own decisions and deal with things not going perfectly, you are not relying on everything feeling comfortable in order to drive.

That is one reason test preparation should be about developing genuine independence rather than learning how to reproduce a particular drive for the duration of the test.

If test anxiety is significantly affecting your driving, discuss it with your instructor before test day rather than simply hoping it disappears when the test begins.

Driving instructors are trained to teach people to drive. They can adapt lessons, manage the learning environment, help you develop driving skills and work with you when confidence is affecting your learning.

They are not mental health professionals.

If anxiety is severe, extends beyond driving or is significantly affecting your day-to-day life, you may benefit from speaking to an appropriate healthcare professional. That does not necessarily mean you need to stop learning to drive, but there may be support available that sits outside the role of a driving instructor.

If you have been diagnosed with anxiety and it affects your ability to drive safely, you must tell DVLA. If it does not affect your ability to drive safely, you do not need to tell them. If you are unsure, GOV.UK advises asking your doctor. Read the GOV.UK guidance about anxiety and driving

You do not need to arrive at your first lesson feeling confident.

If something about driving worries you, tell your instructor what you can. They can start by understanding where you are now, what you can already manage and where the difficulty appears to be.

From there, lessons can be adjusted without losing sight of the eventual goal.

Sometimes that will mean more support. Sometimes it will mean changing the environment or trying a different approach. As your knowledge, ability and experience develop, the challenge can develop with you and the amount of help you need should gradually reduce.

The aim is not to promise that you will never feel nervous when driving.

It is to help you become increasingly capable of managing driving safely and independently, including when everything does not feel completely comfortable.

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