How to steer a car properly - includes advice for the UK driving test

this video is all about steering control how to get good control of your car with the steering wheel i have a video in the top right hand corner of your screen about how to keep a good position how to guide the car through narrow gaps for example but this video is going to focus on your control over the wheel just before i get started i want to mention collingwood insurance they're great if you're looking to insure yourself on a friend or family member's car and have a great offer on at the moment but more on that one later the first thing you want to do is make sure you have a good position for your steering wheel you should be able to touch 12 o'clock which is the top of your wheel with your wrist not your fingertips but your actual wrist if you can make that connection there with a slight bend in your elbow then you've got a good distance you don't want to be so close that your arms like this right over the airbag over the horn like that you're too cramped up and you don't want to be sort of stretching like this for the wheel try and move the steering wheel to suit you most go in and out and up and down now if you've got that function great use it if not you're going to have to compromise with the seat to make sure you still got good control over the clutch the gas and the brake and the steering so for me i reckon a little bit in like that and then height wise i want to be able to see the tops and the bottom of the dials through the center of the steering or about there then i can pull it up here to secure it most cars these days have some kind of system like that it's also important to be able to have your hands around quarter to three if it was a clock so this is a nine this is a free with the top part of your arm relatively close to your body you don't want to be having your arms up here and stretching because you're going to get fatigued and you're not going to have as good control but if your upper part of your arm is near your body you can drive for long distances for longer periods of time in comfort it's a gripe that old italian cars put the steering wheel too far away so if you want to get comfortable with the steering wheel you had to get yourself stupidly close to the pedals to be able to reach the steering wheel nicely and if you had a good distance from the pedals you would be stretching for the steering wheel which isn't very comfortable i think italians had longer arms in the 60s but don't anymore because these days italian cars put the steering wheel in a sensible place so where should you hold the wheel it's recommended that you hold the wheel about quarter to the free so it'll be at three and nine because that gives you the most control over the car possible that's how i would hold the wheel if i was driving around a race circuit say and but also you have your fingers near the windscreen wipers and the indicators which is very handy because you don't want to take your hand off to use those you can have your hands at 10 and 2 like this but i find because your arm's a bit higher you're less stable particularly new drivers so they tend to steer too much i actually prefer to have it a little bit lower for road driving low enough or not so low that you can't reach your indicators but just a little bit lower so your upper arm is nearer your body so you're more stable and that should help you do smaller finer turns of the wheel through those gradual bends without overdoing it if you look at old rolls voices these thumb indentations on the steering wheel are actually at four and eight because they know that's the most comfortable place to place your hands when you're driving particularly on long journeys and rolls royces are all about comfort for the uk driving test they're not as interested about how you hold the wheel or where you hold the wheel as long as you are holding the wheel you have your hands up here here like this as long as you haven't got like your hands and your lap with your thumbs doing this or you're not holding it at all or you're just doing that with your finger they're going to be fine as long as you have good control over the wheel for these small bends it's better to keep your hands on the wheel like this has been coming here i'm not going to let go of the wheel i'm just going to move the steering wheel with my hands staying on the wheel and that gives me better control better accuracy most learners actually do this what some learners do though is they tend to shuffle the wheel a lot which leads them to steering too much they will constantly be doing this and that will mean they don't steer as smoothly they'll stay too much or too little or too suddenly but for these gradual bends keep your hands in the same place on the wheel in a comfortable position and you should be able to do all these bends easily won't be very good at junctions though but it'll work on the bends also hold the steering wheel really gently the car does most the work the car drives in a straight line you don't want to have your hands off the wheel like i did there just to show you the car drives in a straight line but you want to listen to the car you want to listen to where it's going and guide it instead of holding it really tight trying to control it for every exact movement you want nice loose steering listen to where the car wants to go and just small inputs to guide it and keep it in a good position now although keeping your hands on the wheel works for bends such as this bend here i don't need to move my hands it doesn't work so well for junctions as i'm going to show you up here i'm going to turn into this road on the right and hopefully i can make it without taking my hands off the wheel so let's turn right now let's see what happens can i make it that is awkward didn't i weren't 100 sure there i really had to cross my arms over barely made that turn i was wide i might go into the grass in fact i was ready to start suddenly moving my hands if i couldn't make it didn't feel very nice though i'm going to try it up here now i'm going to try and go right at the end of this road while i was keeping my hands on the wheel wish me luck i think i'm gonna need it yeah is anyone coming quite hard to see this i'm just gonna edge out a little bit and improve my view someone's coming so now wait now as i'm not in the way yet and uh right there's the kerb in front of me there let's try and go oh yeah that's not working at all if i didn't move my hands around i would be on the pavement so there's the problem with keeping your hands on the wheel as you try to do junctions you very quickly run out of steering travel and that can be a little bit dangerous so what's the way around that well the recommended way is to feed the wheel and there are benefits and advantages to feeding the wheels so i do recommend you try it what you basically do is both hands go up and down at the same time so like that both up and down at the same time but one hand grips the wheel whilst the other hand gets ready to take over let me show you what i mean so one hand is gripping and they both go down they meet at the bottom you switch your grip so now i'm going to grip with the other hand and let go with the hand that was gripping and then i'll go up and meet at the top i'll switch grip again and they both go down again and as you can see you can continue steering without much of a pause and as you get better you will do it without pausing at all as i am here i can go backwards and forwards or should i say towards the left and towards the right without any pausing a good way to practice that is with this let me show you what i have here is any plate do you need plate dinner plate a little bit of that um spiral thing looking to my eyes not around my eyes but get your dinner plate and practice with a dinner plate practice with a frisbee if you have one because if you drop a frib speed you're not gonna break frisbee but if you drop a dinner plate don't tell anyone i told you to do this i'm not taking responsibility for any broken dinner plates but try to keep turning it in the plate any way you can ideally this way as i'm doing now without it actually stopping and try and reverse the direction as well so go one way then go the other etc and try not to get hypnotized by these black lines there are two main aspects for good steering control one is you need to be ready so you have at least one hand on the wheel two preferably and if you hit a pothole you can keep the car in a straight line if you have just your finger resting on the wheel or just your thumb and you hit a pothole what could happen is your steering could suddenly do that and you're gonna have to then pull the car back as it swerves one way or the other another important aspect is being able to steer consistently continuously so there's no pauses in your steering that way you can go round and bend smoothly for example like this you see the push-pull method where the wheel continuously turns without pausing a lot of learners make the mistake to do this turn with one hand hold with the other or if you do both hands you have to pause then readjust you can continuously move it whilst crossing your arms like this which is not such a problem and it is actually accepted on the driving test despite popular myth but the problem with crossing your arms at some point your arm is going to be over that airbag and that that airbag comes out as some force and if you've got a wristwatch on and that airbag goes off that watch is going to hit you in the head at some force enough force to kill you i believe the force is similar to that of a pro player's golf ball after they've taken a drive it can feel really weird changing your steering technique or even developing a steering technique it can feel like you're not in control so i recommend you drive slowly whilst you're changing your steering technique and also practice when the car is stationary or with your dinner plate plastic dinner plate or frisbee it will feel odd but in the long term if you develop a good steering technique you will be a better driver with regards to the uk driving test you can use whatever steering technique you like as long as you have good control of the car so crossing your arms is acceptable although the problem with the airbag is something you want to consider driving like a gangster is also acceptable but again you've got that problem with the airbag and having your hand here means that you can only do that and you're not as ready to do that if you're good at push pull you can really get it fully locked both ways very quickly it's fully locked left it's fully fully locked right couldn't say that quick enough and i'll go back to straight straight and then there's wax on wax off which isn't a problem if you're parking because if you slip off the wheel when you're parking doesn't matter you're not going anywhere but i don't recommend you do this as you're driving and i say that from experience because when i passed my driving test not long after i passed my driving test that was my preferred method of steering until i slipped off and it took me a couple of occasions to learn but i slipped off the wheel a couple of times and that was scary so i stopped doing it not to mention that when you do wax on wax off you do have that same problem of your arm going over the airbag at some point another common problem with steering is putting your hand in the wheel to turn i see people do this when they're turning and that worries me because not only is the airbag going to break your wrist if it goes off you're not going to have much of a risk left really if someone hits the front of your car and your hand is in the steering wheel your wheel is going to turn a couple of times very quickly if they hit the wheel let's say it's turned to the left right now and someone hits that wheel and your arm is in here that was gonna go like that with your arm in it i don't know what sort of damage that is gonna cause but i don't really wanna find out so keep your hands out of the steering wheel when i drive i keep my hands away from the airbag as much as possible and i do keep my hands out of the steering wheel i tend to drive my hands around about here i like to rest my arms here as well because quite comfortable and i am guilty of putting my arm over the airbag as i steer when i'm parking because your airbag isn't going to go off if you're parking you're not going fast enough although there is a minor chance of it malfunctioning going off which is a bit of a worry but i am yet to hear of that happening although i'm sure it must have happened somewhere at some time i recommend you straighten the wheel yourself after doing a turn for example here i'm going to go right i'm going to add the steering i'm going to take it off myself like so after that car look where i'm going i'm adding the steering and now you can see i'm taking it off accurately placing the car exactly where i want it to be if i don't learn that skill and i don't do it myself the car may straighten too quickly which means i'll be going off towards the curb or it might straighten too slowly which will mean i'll be on the wrong side of the road i'm going to give you an example now i'm going to let the car straighten itself by letting go of the wheel i'll turn right at the end of the road here i'll steer to the right when it's safe to go and i'll let go and see how it straightens whether it's on time too early or too late it could be either edge out to improve my view looks clear so i'm going to add some steering and i'm going to take it off and that's way way too late it's straightened way too slow so i ended up completely on the wrong side of the road which obviously isn't very safe and i remember that very thing happening with my friend in 2008 and i know it's 2008 because he hadn't long passed his driving test and he'd been driving around in his peugeot 206 and his dad had just bought a brand new 2008 audi a5 which somehow he was insured on and was able to drive and we were leaving a golf club and he turned right out of the golf club and he was used to his peugeot 206 and how quickly itself straightened this audi didn't straighten us quick so he let go of the wheel far too late and we ended up going towards oncoming cars so you had to have a little bit of a panic to steer it back to avoid the oncoming cars so that's an example of why it's better to self straighten yourself or straighten the wheel yourself instead of relying on the car to do it so you are in control and you're telling the car to go exactly where you want to all the time particularly on roundabouts and this is uh something a lot of learners do as they're going around the roundabout and they've got to take the exit they let go of the wheel to take the exit but it straightens far too quickly because on a roundabout you're going a lot faster than you are on a normal t-junction and then you get used to letting go of the wheel on a normal t-junction it straightens a lot more slowly but now they're doing 20 miles an hour on a big roundabout i mean let go of the wheel it's going to straighten really quickly and that means they jar off to the left to leave the roundabout too quickly enough to grip the wheel again and bring it back which is why it's such a problem because not only is it straight in at different speeds and different cars it all depends on the caster angle of the suspension by the way which is what determines how quickly it straightens but it also straightens different speeds depending on how fast you're going however if you're good at straightening yourself you can put the car exactly where you want to all the time and now for a bit of bonus information i mentioned caster angle earlier so caster angle determines how quickly your wheels are going to self-straighten your car is designed to go in a straight line it will keep you in a straight line that's why you don't have to hold the wheel hard the caster angle determines how quickly it's going to go in a straight line but what is it what is caster angle a good way of seeing what caster angle is is next time you go to a supermarket look at the wheels on the bottom of the shopping trolley as you push the shopping trolley forwards all the wheels will go to the same position and that's because the pivot point of the wheel just looking for something circular right now this will do the pivot point of the wheel is at the front of the wheel so even if the wheels at an angle when you move forwards the wheel wants to go to straight and that's what they do with the car's wheels but it's tiny it's very very small it's not like a shopping trolley where it's right at the front of the wheel it's like a couple of degrees out otherwise your car would be very hard to turn you'd be really really heavy steering if you had that severe caster angle well i hope this video helps you with your steering control if you think it will please give my video a thumbs up and check out collingwoodconfuse.com collingwood are great if you're looking to insure yourself on somebody else's car whilst you're learning because you can do so without affecting their policy there's long and short-term policies available as well and if you cancel a long-term policy you will get a pro rata refund for the term that you haven't used using the link in the description will give you up to 35 percent off and a 20 pound amazon gift card also using the link in the description does support this channel however don't just do that i also recommend you check out confused.com because i always recommend comparing insurers to make sure you get the best deal there's a link in the description the confused.com again using that link does support the channel and confuse.com are often very competitive if you want to get my future videos please subscribe and until the next one cheerio

Channel: Conquer Driving

Views: 1,229,525

Keywords: 10 and 2 steering, quarter to three steering, ten to two steering, how to hold the steering wheel, push pull steering technique, crossing your arms when steering, wax on wax off steering, how to steer to pass the uk driving test, what steering will fail the uk driving test, letting go of the wheel to self straighten, best position for the steering wheel, castor angle, correct way to steer a car, how to steer a car correctly

Id: R8zhtcN_4u4

Length: 17min 57sec (1077 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 28 2020