Overcoming fear is a tricky thing. Not having driven until my early thirties ( It’s New York City thing!) I was leary of driving. Not frightened, but just leary of it. Living in coastal Maine, I found that driving was a great skill to have. Previously I had only lived in urban areas where public transportation made most local traffic easy; friends made up the slack by taking me where busses and trains didn’t run.
My first wife was willing to teach me to drive, but it didn’t take long to learn that she was terrified of it. She drove daily, sometimes for long distances, but was intensely fearful of it. Not being a driver, her fear, as my teacher, passed on to me.
It took a lot of driving to learn to be a careful but not continually frightened driver. It was many years, however, before I appreciated how brave my first wife was. She successfully mastered great fear daily to drive her car to work, social events, vacations, and stores.
I gradually overcame my fear, but for her, it was a question of mastering it daily.
Isn’t it ironic that for you it was a New York thing and just over the line in New Jersey, we couldn’t wait to get our learner’s permit–at 16 years old.
Down here in Florida, kids are driving tractors so much earlier. Probably why you hardly ever see the old “Student Driver” on any cars. The kids are all pros!
It was a New York thing due to all the congestion, density and all the needed public transportation. Until you leave that you don’t realize that it’s different for everybody else. New Yorkers of my generation really were cloistered.
You are right that it’s ironic that just “over the bridge” things were so different.