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.