Does real driving experience come from years or miles?

Miles you have driven,and in time you get experience.

I think more from miles driven, but some of the years passed involved watching other people handle traffic, and there is a thing or two to be learned from that as well (mostly scary things).

Miles. There are people in large cities that never drive because they grow up not having to as much.

Miles and diversity of driving scenarios.

By the slime I was 20, I had driven many many times in San Francisco, on freeways all over the Bay Area and in Southern California, long drives in the Sierra and up and down the California Coast. And I had commuted for a couple summers across the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Bridge.

But a friend who was a year older rarely drove more than ten miles from home, and hardly ever on the freeway. Forty years later he is still a lousy driver and hates driving farther than the grocery store.

Miles driven. You need to gain experience across a range of different weather and road conditions. That takes time. Plus, you need to develop confidence.

@dappled_leaves Very scary indeed. I put off getting my license for a long time because of the way my boyfriend drives. He doesn’t work his way to the HOV lane, he crosses all 3–4 lanes at once to get to it. He’s not a bad driver though, just extremely confident I guess.

It comes from the combination of hours (years) and miles and situations and weather and road surfaces and conditions and variability between customs “here” and “there” and lighting and attention to all of it.

Before I took the wheel for the first time I had some excellent give-and-take with my father (mostly) and with my mother about why they did “this” instead of “that”; why Dad didn’t always pass the slower driver, and why he sometimes did, and how he managed the vehicle and what he did with his hands, even how he put on his sunglasses when he needed them.

By the time I started learning to operate the pedals it was just a matter of getting the mechanics of operating the clutch, the shift, the brake-and-gas-pedal shuffle, the high-beam switch on the floor, and actually moving the wheel and guiding where we went.

It still comes down to paying attention. I ride with some people sometimes (once is too many times!) who obviously manage mostly because other people pay attention to them, because they’re not doing it themselves!

Just remember there is always something to learn and improve on, in the last Twenty years I have driven just over 3 million kilometres, and in every weather condition out there,and there is still room to learn and improve on.

Miles and miles, different road and weather conditions and both nigh and day driving. Plus a bit of driver savvy.

Miles driven would be the big thing. Age helps too, in the sense that as we age we tend to be able to predict consequences better and are more conservative in our risk taking. As we get older we typically tend to drive more defensively and slow down a little.

On the other side of the coin I find that age, experience and mileage can often be detrimental to a person’s driving. It seems with many people the more they drive the more confident (cocky?) they become in their driving skills and the more they let bad habits build up.Case in point: my dad. He’s been driving 44 years or so and never been in an accident that was his fault. As a result he thinks nothing of his bad driving habits since they’ve not bitten him on the ass yet.

Miles. But just knowing how to drive a vehicle isn’t enough. You have to learn what to watch out for, and that takes time and/or special training.

…& miles to go before I sleep.

It would be extremely difficult for me to fall asleep while driving, I’d probably need to be awake 2–3 days before I could get to that point. I’m too alert to relax and I don’t trust anyone else’s driving enough to sleep as a passenger.
I know a lot of older people that often complain about getting tired behind the wheel if they drive for more than an hour.

I know you’ve heard this before, but miles for sure although that’s a loaded answer in that the more miles you drive….... The more you age..

Women can’t drive lol