By Olakunle Olafioye
Learning driving could be fun, but challenging at some time. Particularly, taking driving lessons from one’s spouse could be a bit more frustrating. While a cursory statistics of owners and managers of driving schools in one’s neighborhood will reveal that the majority of driving schools in the country are run by men, it is ironical to realize that the success rate which these trainers record with their female learner-clients is in sharp contrast with the outcomes when they are personally training their wives.
Mr Babatunde Ajose who is running a driving school in Lagos for over a decade, claimed that he had trained over 100 people who were mostly women.
Curiously however, Mr Ajose’s wife was not one of them.
According to him, the few occasions he attempted to give his wife driving lesson were uneventful.
“At first, my wife did not show any interest in driving. She was only encouraged when one of her younger sisters drove to our house on a visit. After that she began to disturb me about teaching her,” he recalled.
Mr Ajose recalled that the initial challenge he had teaching his wife was that of time.
“Being the busy type, she could only be available on Saturdays and unfortunately for her, that was when most of my trainees who were just as busy as herself would be available for their driving lessons. Apart from this, I will say she was less receptive to being corrected or cautioned. She would never take those corrections in good stride. At the end of the day she just stopped coming. She was eventually trained by one of our neighbours who was an automobile-mechanic,” he revealed.
Mrs Joy Iredia’s slow-but-steady progress in driving was temporarily punctuated one Sunday evening as she stormed out of the car after what she described as a hostile treatment from her husband.
According to her, her driving lessons under her husband’s supervision had gone on fairly fine until that fateful day when he suddenly lost his patient with her.
Recalling the event of the day, Mrs Iredia said: “The training was going on fine until I made a little mistake. Normally, whenever I made mistakes he would ask me to stop and he would explain the implications of such mistakes to me.
“But he was a different person on this particular day. He would criticize me for every little mistake as if I did them intentionally. It was very unusual of him. So, at a point I got pissed off, stopped the car and trekked back home. He eventually registered me at a driving school where I was later trained.”
Mrs Taiwo Amao’s interest in driving was literally killed and replaced by Amaxophobia, an excessive or irrational fear for driving, the day she crashed her husband’s car into another car parked by the road side.
Before then, Mrs Amao said that undergoing driving lesson with her husband had not been without hassles, but she knew she had to endure the unusual hostility from him if she was to attain the level of proficiency required from her to become a qualified driver.
But the exercise turned out awry at a time she thought she was getting closer to mastering the control of the wheels.
According to her, “we were returning home from the field where I normally had the training. Usually, my husband would take over the car from me whenever we were going home. But the previous week, because he believed I was making progress, he conceded that I drove the car home, which I did without much problems.
“But on this particular occasion, which was the second time I would be driving home, just few meters away from our neighborhood, I spotted a truck some distance away and awkwardly applied the brakes and got transfixed in the middle of the road.
“My husband who was on phone at the time, signaled that I should move the car a little bit leftwards which I did. But at the point of bringing the car to a complete halt, I mistakenly pedaled on the accelerator, forcing the car to surge forward and rammed into another car that was parked by the roadside. My husband’s response to the incident made me to vow never to come close to driving again. Driving for me now is a no-go area.”
Notwithstanding, however, there are those who had it smooth learning driving from their husbands.
Many of these few lots are of the opinion that taking driving lessons with one’s hubby could be fun and interesting.
One of such lucky few is Mrs Ajarat Amodu. Describing her experience learning driving from her husband as interesting, Mrs Amodu said that her husband’s patience and sense of humour made her driving lessons enjoyable.
“His way of correcting me whenever I was not getting things right was to liken the way I was doing things to the way I handled utensils in the kitchen. On one occasions, he jokingly compared the way I held the steering to the way one would lift a pot of soup from the fire, which was of course a funny comparison. There were few instances he would appear serious and harsh in his tone, but because of the kind of person he is, he always found ways of playing his seriousness down,” she recalled.
A driving school owner, Mr Hamid Yusuf, said that he is very familiar with stories of women who find it difficult to be taught by their husbands.
He blamed the situation on the intimacy and the closeness between couples.
“These are people who live in the same houses and possibly in the same room. Before leaving home for the field where the lesson will take place it is possible they have had some happy or not-too-good moments to share together. These of course are bound to interfere with the training. Meanwhile, driving requires full and total concentration for easy assimilation.
“A number of women that registered with me have given similar excuses as to why they decided to come to driving school. Similarly, there are men who brought their wives or registered them with us because they could not just teach them, which of course is the best and the standard practice,” he said.
Explaining, Mr Yusuf said that attending a driving school is one of the major requirements for the issuance of drivers’ license by the issuing authorities in the country.
“The Nigeria Highway Code is very explicit on the requirements or qualification for driver’s license in the country. According to the National Road Traffic Regulation, anyone who intends to drive on the nation’s highways is required to attend a driving school accredited by the Federal Road Safety Commission, FRSC.
“The person will later obtain learner’s permit. Apart from that he or she must be accompanied by an experienced driver on every training session and always indicates that he or she is still learning by tying the learner’s symbol at the front and at the back of the vehicle with which or she is being taught. The training period is three months before the person will later undergo a test that will qualify him or her as a licensed driver,” he said.