Teaching an Aspie to Drive: #3 Perceptive Driving for Safety and Efficiency

Should people with Asperger's be allowed to drive?
I responded to a twitter question and had the following exchange:



So the real answer needs more than 140 characters.
This is the third in a series. Read the first and second posts for context.
PERCEPTIONS:

• What does a safe driver perceive?
• What must an Aspie learn to perceive and ignore?
• What are the cues that can help an individual with Asperger's be the safest driver on the road?

Again, there are some foundational principles to observe about perceptions.

• No one perceives everything. Recognizing your blind spots is key to compensating for them. Since we are not bugs, we don't have wide angle vision. There will always be significant visual information outside our field of vision. To capture all the available information, we must drive unsafely—constantly swiveling our head to make sure we don't miss anything. Driving with a swivelhead is dangerous, so we do something different. We accept the necessity of blind spots and use mirrors and quick glances to compensate. Just as a quarterback learns to check down on available receivers, a safe driver can learn to check down a series of regions. I don't suggest this is the only pattern, but a driver might adopt a rhythm of checking these zones: 1) Close in front: What's the next car doing? 2) Further out: What is traffic down the road doing? 3) Just behind: Who is following and how close are they? 4) Blind spot left: Who's approaching or passing from the fast side? 5) Blind spot right: Is there slow or pacing traffic on the right? One idea might be to use some regular feature such as a mile marker, a new song on the radio, an exit, etc. as a cue to scan through the five zones. Setting a safe routine can create both literal safety and emotional security—both of which support safe driving.

• Your perception is skewed. Don't rely completely on your own perception of the literal or relational environment. Drivers that seem stable and consistent one moment might change behavior abruptly and swerve to make an exit or accelerate through a gap. I don't suggest that Aspie's should drive with paranoia, but with a general distrust that they can sense everything. When driving with passengers, the Aspie driver would do well to verbalize perceptions and check in with others to see how accurate they are. It is also literally true that driving from the left side of the car makes it more difficult to judge distance to objects on the right side. As an important part of learning to drive, I had my son park next to cones, then stones, then curbs and finally cars. Each time, I had him tell me how close he was, then get out of the car to compare perception with reality.

• Ignoring is as important as perceiving. Since there is far too much stimuli for one person to take in, driving is partly an exercise in learning to ignore. Some unsafe practices include reading bumper stickers; scanning roadside billboards; over-focusing on directional signs; being distracted by text or images on other cars; interacting with other drivers; and interacting with passengers in ways that might be distracting. The key strategy for ignoring is to focus on what is essential to safety. This is an important strategy, and worth discussion and reinforcement. Have the learning Aspie think out loud about what to ignore and what to perceive. That will help you as the instructor calibrate their attention and focus.

• Be self-perceptive. Recognizing your own state is one key to safe driving. Being aware of the internal environment is as important as the external environment. Being fatigued, hungry, angry or anxious can all lead to distraction and impulsive driving. As persons with Asperger's, we are prone to being overwhelmed by internal and external stimuli. We need to stay on top of our own state so we don't get blindsided by some condition or concern. It is especially wise to recognize our troublesome states. Maybe we are at our most irritable and distractible when we're hungry or sleepy. Maybe the radio makes you crazy or low-angle sunlight is a problem. Know your weaknesses and plan accordingly.

• Keep driving and traveling in perspective. The consequences of unsafe driving are disproportionate to the consequences of inefficient driving. Speed kills. Lateness irritates. Keep them in perspective.