Goals for Driver Education

Why Teaching Emotions Matters as Much as Teaching Steering

When we teach learner drivers, we spend hours perfecting clutch control, steering technique, and mirror checks. These are vital skills, but they are not the full picture. If we’re serious about developing safe, thoughtful, self-aware drivers, we must give equal (if not greater) attention to helping young people understand the role emotions play in driving.

Anger, stress, anxiety, overconfidence - these are major contributors to risky decisions on the road. A learner can have excellent car control and still make unsafe choices when emotional pressure hits. Whether it’s reacting to a near miss, driving after an argument, or trying to impress friends, emotions often override technical skill.

This isn’t just our opinion.  it’s what the GDE Matrix (Goals for Driver Education) is trying to tell us. The higher levels of the matrix (decisions around personal goals, emotional state, and risk awareness) are the real root causes of crashes, far more than technical errors like gear selection or poor mirror use. In other words, it’s not the steering, it’s the mindset.

The challenge is, most driving instructors haven’t been trained to teach this. Our qualification process and the UK driving test focus mainly on vehicle handling and traffic procedures. Emotional self-awareness? Coaching conversations? Hardly touched. We're not assessed on these things by the DVSA, so it's no surprise many ADIs feel underprepared.

But if we want to produce drivers who are truly safe - not just test-ready - we have to step up. The driving test should not be the bar you use to judge your success as a driving instructor.

Pass photos are nice, but they're a false measure of our effectiveness as road safety professionals.

The real test is what happens when our learners are alone, under pressure, and need to make the right choices. That’s where coaching emotional awareness, motivation, and self-reflection makes all the difference.
SL