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.