Butterfly88 wrote:
No, I haven't. In addition to ASD I have a few anxiety disorders and even the thought of driving makes me anxious.
Me, too, but I've still been driving since the age of seventeen. Anxiety is something you tend to get over, after you've faced it a few times. While most of my peers were excited to start driving, I was content to sit in the passenger seat and hang my head out the window like a dog. But eventually I saw a car I wanted, and everything changed. Oh, that, and I got a job, and my parents couldn't be available to chauffeur me around all the time, so I kinda had to learn. It took me three tries to pass the driving part of the test (having a cop sitting next to me made me sweat). Third time, I decided to use a Toyota, instead of a station wagon. It was much easier to parallel park, but the clutch made things a little jerky (now I won't drive a vehicle without a stick - it makes me feel naked).
I still prefer NOT to get into high traffic areas I'm unfamiliar with, but even that wasn't so bad in my twenties, when I found living as an anonymous faceless nobody in a large metro area very liberating. My sense of direction, though, is as bad as my face-blindness. Until I've driven the same road a dozen times, I won't remember it, and even after driving the same route every day for years, I will be oblivious to landmarks I've passed a million times.
Maps and compasses are your friends, learn to read them, and keep them handy, GPS won't always be there in poor service areas.
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"I don't mean to sound bitter, cynical or cruel - but I am, so that's how it comes out." - Bill Hicks