Sunday, November 11, 2012

A day as a taxi driver

The plan for the day was to drive alone for the first time to my work place, but, my husband needed a ride to a place near my office, so he came along. We however decided that he and my son were to be siting on the back seat, and no instructions were allowed.  So we went for a taxi driver setup.

I have driven many times the same route (about 20 km long), but always accompanied by my husband as a copilot. His company is quite reassuring because besides telling me where to go, he also lets me know when something can be improved on my driving.  Lately he has not been telling that many things so I am assuming I am ready to venture on my own.

Day. Saturday morning
Traffic conditions. No traffic jams. It was relatively calm, but not deserted
Speed limits. 40km/h, 80 km/h and a short trip of 100 km/h
Weather. Already on the plus side +3C or so, still, it has been colder before so it could  be icy on areas not exposed to the sun.
How did the trip go. Quite good!, my concentration and eyes were on the road, making sure I was keeping the car on a speed I could control and based on the weather conditions. I changed the lanes when I have to, observed speed limits, and arrived safely to my destination. The gear changing techniques could be better, e.g. switching early to higher gears.
Highlight of the route. There is a part of the route on which one of the three lanes is ending, so it is becoming a two lanes road for a short period. On a previous journey I missed the sign and I was taking my time to merge into the left lane, I noticed too late but the driver on the left lane anticipated that I will have to merge at the last minute, scary stuff..
This time, a big truck and I will expect a professional driver missed the sign too, and I was the driver on the left lane, I did not overtake him and gave him plenty of space to merge because I thought he will do the same as I did. He did, he even signaled shortly.

I decided to record my heart rate on the way there and back. You can still see driving is a big deal for me. Probably I can compare my Heart rate graphs later as my driving skills improve and I feel more confident.

After reaching my work place, my husband gave me instructions (from the back seat) where he needed to go, I was a bit nervous because it was a new place, but we went there. On the way back he then sit next to me. This time I remembered to start my gps device to record track, speed and distance and see the correlations to my heart rate. See the graphs below


Heart rate graph. On my way to my work place, then to drop my husband to his destination

Heart rate on the way back home. Lower, maybe because my husband was in the passenger seat

Speed clearly on legal limits :)

My Nissan Micra and my son getting into the car


The logs above can be seen from movescount.com






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