Driving Lessons Guide: Learning to Drive a Car

The calmest first driving session starts with the engine switched off. The learner sits in the driver's seat and locates each control in turn. A manual car has three pedals in a fixed order from the left: clutch, brake, accelerator. An automatic has two, brake and accelerator, and both belong to the right foot. Pressing each pedal while the car is still gives a first feel for how they differ. The clutch travels furthest, the brake feels firm, and the accelerator is the lightest of the three. The gear lever, handbrake, indicators, wipers and headlight switch are learned at this stage too, along with where neutral sits on the lever.

The seat comes next. Its distance is right when the clutch or brake can be pushed to the floor while the knee is still slightly bent. The backrest stands upright enough for the wrists to reach the top of the wheel without the shoulders leaving the seat. The rear-view mirror should frame the whole back window. The side mirrors show a thin strip of the car's own body at their inner edge, with the rest given to the road alongside. Seat belts go on before the key turns, for the driver and the supervisor alike.

Why spend time on a stationary car? Once the car is moving, a beginner's attention is already taken up by feet and road. If a hand is still hunting for the indicator stalk, the eyes drop to the dashboard at exactly the moment they are needed outside. A small drill helps here. The supervisor calls out left indicator, right indicator, headlights and handbrake in random order, and the learner touches each one without looking down. Once every control can be found by feel, the cabin is familiar enough to start the engine.

Learners in an automatic skip the clutch altogether, though the car still has habits of its own to learn. The selector usually offers P for park, R for reverse, N for neutral and D for drive. The engine is started in P with a foot on the brake, and the lever is moved only while the brake is held down. That habit stops the car from lurching when the selector changes position.

The feature worth understanding early is creep. In many automatics, once the lever is in D and the brake is eased off, the car rolls forward without any throttle at all. This makes a wonderful training tool. On an empty lot a beginner can control speed purely by adding and releasing brake pressure, and only touches the accelerator once the creep feels under control. The right foot learns its two jobs in sequence, braking first and accelerating second.

The left foot stays at rest on the footrest. Beginners are sometimes tempted to brake with the left foot, which leads to harsh stops because that foot has never been trained to meter pressure. When waiting at a long red light, keep the brake held. Before getting out, return the lever to P and pull up the handbrake. Anyone who later moves to a manual will find that everything learned about reading the road and mirrors in an automatic carries over intact; the only new piece is the left foot's coordination.

Every car has four main blind spots. Two sit at the front corners, hidden by the A-pillars beside the windscreen, and two lie along the rear flanks around the B-pillars. A motorbike or a small car can sit in one of those zones and appear in none of the mirrors. Many beginners only grasp this when another vehicle suddenly shows up alongside just as they start drifting into the next lane.

Lane changes are therefore drilled as a fixed three-step routine. First, the indicator goes on a few seconds early so other road users can read the intention. Second, the eyes check the rear-view mirror and then the mirror on the side you are moving to. Third, the head turns briefly towards that shoulder, the move known as a shoulder check, to confirm the blind spot is empty. The car moves across smoothly once all three are done, leaving room for whoever is behind.

The hardest part for a beginner is turning the head without the steering following it, since the hands like to drift in the direction the head goes. Practise on a straight, quiet road: drive slowly, glance left and right in turn, and keep the car in its lane throughout. A quick glance is enough before the eyes return forward. The A-pillars deserve attention at junctions too, because a pedestrian crossing can be hidden behind one; leaning the head forward slightly opens up that view.

Parallel parking puts the car into a space that runs alongside the road, reversing while steering. The difficulty comes from one thing. When you reverse with the front wheels turned, the rear of the car swings sideways first and the front follows later. A beginner has no mental map yet linking steering input to where the tail goes, so the car ends up far from the kerb or the rear wheel bumps it.

The sequence is easier to hold onto as a set of numbers. Choose a practice space about one and a half times the length of the car. Pull up alongside the vehicle in front of the space with roughly one metre of side clearance. Reverse very slowly, and as your rear passes the back of that car, turn the wheel fully towards the kerb until the body sits at about 45 degrees. When the headlights of the car behind the space appear in full in the road-side mirror, straighten the wheel. Once your front has cleared the rear of the car ahead, turn the wheel fully away from the kerb so the nose swings in. The finish line is a body parallel to the kerb, about 30 centimetres off it, roughly the length of an adult's foot.

The safest first attempts happen on an empty lot with two cones or water bottles marking the space. A small strip of tape on the glass can serve as a temporary reference mark. A few shuffles forward and back are a normal part of this manoeuvre, even for experienced drivers. Because each car's dimensions and mirror positions differ, reference points found in your own car are ready to use every day.

Many learners prepare for the SIM A while they learn to drive. This Indonesian licence covers private cars weighing up to 3,500 kilograms, which includes city cars, hatchbacks and seven-seat MPVs. The basic requirements are a minimum age of 17, an e-KTP identity card, and passing a health check and a psychological test. Applicants then sit a theory test on road signs and traffic rules, followed by the practical test. A SIM A is valid for five years and can be renewed.

The practical test at Satpas, the police driving licence centre, assesses manoeuvres at low speed. Commonly practised items include parallel parking, bay or perpendicular parking, a slalom between cones, and stopping and pulling away on a slope. Each of them rests on the same skills used in everyday driving: smooth clutch or brake control, a steady crawl, and accurate mirror reading. That is why the groundwork from the cabin stage through to parallel parking doubles as test preparation.

Test-specific practice can be added on an empty lot with cones laid out to mimic the course: a row of evenly spaced cones for the slalom, and a coned box for bay parking. The aim is to get through without touching a cone and without hurrying. For vehicles above the SIM A limit, such as a commercial box truck over 3,500 kilograms, the licence class is SIM B I, which requires the applicant to have held a SIM A for at least 12 months.