FROM FLYING TO DRIVING
This article was published in The Tribune.
Posted at: Dec 26 2014
12:41AM
From flying to driving
·
Biren Yadav
In youthful exuberance it's not uncommon to transgress the lines
of decency while interacting with elders. My such transgression invited full
wrath of my father who asked me to raise my level from that of a driver to a
gentleman. The comparison was a rude shock to me. This was in spite of the many
other unwitting comparisons of me with the drivers which came unabated from my
village folks who considered pilots superior to drivers but nevertheless of the
same clan. The comparisons were everywhere. Buses and trucks had “Pilot”
written on the driver’s seat. An Army officer once joked that his driver
claimed that he should be considered superior to a pilot as he did the same job
with the additional difficulty of combating dense traffic and potholes which
were non-existent in the sky. I had great difficulty once explaining my
non-flying routine to an inquisitive elder. To my reply that “we rest in the
crew room” he nodded, comparing the incomparable, “like long-route drivers laze
in dingy rooms at bus stops?” They also are sure that all pilots drive aka fly
in an intoxicated state and, like their brethren truck drivers, are infatuated
by liquor. I hate these comparisons and firmly believe that pilots and drivers
are as different as criminals and saints.
However, age and experience made me see similarities between
flying and driving. My ego, however, restricted these similarities to driving
and flying only still maintaining that pilots and drivers are class apart. I
approach driving with the same caution and attitude as I show towards flying. I
started reading extensively about traffic rules, regulations, accidents and its
causes. Similar to human behaviour articles on aviation psychology, I found
articles on the effect of fatigue and dynamics of human behaviour in road
accidents. Overall, I was becoming more aware of the road hazards and thereby
improving my driving. I was totally getting convinced that driving should be
approached as is flying till I came across the litmus test of teaching driving
to my wife. I took it to prove my hypothesis by juxtaposing flying and driving
and also to impress my wife by my unorthodox and original lesson plans based on
the flying training pattern. Driving was to start only after she cleared the
pre-driving test on all rules and regulations and read the car manual and the
three books on driving that I gave her.
However, surprisingly and unexpectedly, she found this
pre-driving training humiliating and accused me of treating her like a pupil
which she was not. Her refusal to learn from me led to change of the instructor
and she landed up with a local driving school which cleared her to drive solo
in the allotted two weeks. It hurt my ego, more so when the instructor told me
that she was one of the better trainees and had natural reflexes. I was sure
that the school never went into serious professional teaching and had done a
shoddy work which would be evident soon.
Well ten years have
passed since then and she has been doing just fine, having driven extensively
on all sorts of errands in many cities. She never fell on the wrong side of
traffic cops, while I had three bookings during this period. I always believed
that pilots and drivers were different but my wife also taught me that
flying and driving too are different, at least as far as teaching part is
concerned.
Nice one :)
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