Hello!
don't usually post, but this topic warrants an answer, because I totally feel you. Everything you wrote is exactly what I was fighting through, right down to the weird disbelief you get from the family.
I was never that interested in cars or driving so I honestly only did it for my CV at the age of 21-22 and had the road test at least 3 times, probably 4. And with every time I tried I made dumber and dumber mistakes. I aced almost every theory test I had to do, except for the last one which I just barely got right.
Needles to say all these failures and judgemental stares I got from everyone did not help. I was so insanely nervous the last time I did the road test the first thing I did is almost run into a bus. So how did I still make it ? The cop testing me was bribed, because that was possible in my country at the time. When I found that out I did not want to drive at all anymore. I've asked my dad 1-2 times if he'd let me drive the car in some backwoods town on Sundays at 7 AM. We never got to that.
I'm not proud of what happened and am certainly not telling you to try and bribe anyone, but at some point in my life I just needed to start driving. My girlfriend at the time had a son and we wanted to be able to go places without relying on trains. So I got some more driving lessons (2 to be exact) when I moved to Germany and the instructor said I'm doing ok, but that I am way too nervous. After that I rented a few cars, drove around places, bought myself a cheap one at some point too. I scraped the thing on all sorts of places and have - to this day - problems parking sideways. That said, it's fine and I am getting better and better. Got 2 long 5-8 hour trips under my belt and more than 20.000 km driven. Never had an accident.
What I'm trying to say is that some people have serious problems when trying to pay attention to the road, to other cars, pedestrians, traffic signs, shifting, braking etc. It's a lot. Just try not to give up and keep at it.
Some actual practical advice I can give you:
- try riding a bike on roads whenever you can. Then upgrade to a scooter or something that is motorized but does not need a license (depends on what country you live in). when doing so try to behave as you would in a car. check your corners, look behind, look at signs, etc.
- get a different instructor. even if you just go for 1-2 drives with him/her. for one, yours is not a good one judging by what he told you. mine was bad, but at least he always said "you can do this". I have tried a different one when I failed multiple times as well. For one, he may be able to see some flaws you may have that your current instructor just can't seem to recognize. At the very least he can definitely tell you how you are doing overall. Also a different instructor may have a different car. I had the problem that I could not clutch properly, because the car was an old rust bucket. The other instructor had a new car and that went WAY better for me.
- if all else fails try to switch from a manual transmission car to an automatic. that would take a load of thinking off your brain immediately. Depending in what country you are in you may not be allowed to do the test with automatics or even switch cars without redoing a bunch of hours in the new car, but at least you will gain some experience.
- this one is worth gold: find a friend or family member you trust, who can explain calmly and has access to a car. drive out to some boondocks with this person's car and try driving around a bit. Now this is illegal and possibly even dangerous so make sure to pick the right spot. But with this you can gain a bunch of experience without needing to cough up a bunch of cash for more driving lessons
- in the end it all comes down to being confident in what you are doing and you can only achieve that by driving more and more
Good luck!
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