Driving Default: Yesterday I reality-checked it . . .

[Figleaf23]

Originally Posted by Owen Smith

I found it all pretty intuitive when I learnt to drive in 1983 (manual gearbox in the UK). I got in, started the engine, drove away, and I was doing 40mph round a bend in third gear before the instructor said anything. (What she said was: don't go any faster for now on a first lessoon and don't put it into 4th). I remember thinking "what's the big deal? It's all obvious".

But like Dorin Thora above I had helped my dad repair his cars for years, ...

I had a similar experience with my first lesson in a single-engine prop plane. It really does help if you understand the mechanical doings before starting out, at least superficially.

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by Figleaf23

I had a similar experience with my first lesson in a single-engine prop plane. It really does help if you understand the mechanical doings before starting out, at least superficially.

Though this make go to the point that the OP may not have had a default at all to begin with, and that the first time behind the wheel was spent acquiring that default.

[Figleaf23]

Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha

... In the case of routine driving the answer is the skill does not improve beyond the Dabbler level.

Unless I'm mistaken, that's not RAW. In RAW, you continue to accrue time toward a skill (albeit slowly) even when using it only routinely 'on the job'.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha

Sure, and in those 10 years you've maybe made a couple of dozen driving rolls to avoid an accident, maybe a half hour's worth of skill training per year which added all up doesn't even come close to the training you get in a good 8 hour defensive driving course which most driver's never take.

If you can learn a skill from routine job experience you ought to be able to pick up some points in Driving from routine driving. At 1600 hours per character point though, only long distance truck drivers and serious commuters are going to get much out of it.

[Opellulo]

Originally Posted by Icelander

With everything else, if you spend time using the skill, you improve in it slowly-but-surely until you can reliably succeed at everything you encounter in your use of the skill (at which point you need greater challenges to improve your skill). Why not with Driving?
Is it magic?

This is the point.

I don't think that simply spending time you learn something; i think that, to actually learn something, you must have the will to learn and do actually practice. Muscolar memory and phisical shape could sure help in repeating tasks but this is not true for more complex ones.

Reality check: everyone had to pass a boring or difficult exam and had "memorized" the book but what have you actually learnt?
In professional life examples are everyday: someone likes his job and become better at it while other do only the minimum to please the boss. Driving is another perfect example: many grant that they "can drive" only because they got a driving licence but how much they actually know and had experienced about driving? How to handle in snowy or wet roads, how the different type of aspalth performs, how to choose a trajectory in a turn, how to regulate the tyre pression in the different season of the year, what RPM manitain to use less fuel, and so on...

IMHO many people choose to raise only couple of skills; for all the rest they use defaults and show (over)confidence and maybe an unwanted talent.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

If you can learn a skill from routine job experience you ought to be able to pick up some points in Driving from routine driving. At 1600 hours per character point though, only long distance truck drivers and serious commuters are going to get much out of it.

Just so. If you learn job skills by doing jobs, you can learn Driving by, eh, driving.

And note that even though I'm far from a serious commuter, I've spent far more than 1600 hours driving over the past ten years. All it takes is an average of 20 minutes per day, after all.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Icelander

And note that even though I'm far from a serious commuter, I've spent far more than 1600 hours driving over the past ten years. All it takes is an average of 20 minutes per day, after all.

So you have 1 point in Driving. Big deal. You aren't going be entering any professional races or engaging in any high speed chases are you?

[zorg]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

As a professional driver, I may be somewhat biased but am pretty firmly of the belief that the vast majority of people use Driving at default. Modern roadways are designed to provide a large TDM, but if you throw most people any kind of curveball, especially in wet conditions that impose a penalty, things get really ugly really fast.

I agree. Last week, I was on holiday in Wales, which goes pretty far in removing that TDM: driving on the wrong side, absurdly narrow and winding streets, and unexpected situations (roundabout + trafic lights, I'm looking at you). I got through with a few minor failed driving rolls (no critfails), and I compensated with renting the smallest car we could find, but it was still a reminder how much of driving is just routine, as opposed to raw skill.

Originally Posted by Icelander

With everything else, if you spend time using the skill, you improve in it slowly-but-surely until you can reliably succeed at everything you encounter in your use of the skill (at which point you need greater challenges to improve your skill). Why not with Driving?

99% of all driving features routine, boring situations which challenge you not at all. That isn't enough stimulus to improve. In the same way, jogging each day for 2 minutes won't improve your Running skill; just as I assume plinking at trashcans over a few yards with a gun won't do anything for your Guns skill.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by zorg

99% of all driving features routine, boring situations which challenge you not at all. That isn't enough stimulus to improve. In the same way, jogging each day for 2 minutes won't improve your Running skill; just as I assume plinking at trashcans over a few yards with a gun won't do anything for your Guns skill.

Basic Set page 293 says, "If you have a job, time spent on the job counts as “study” of the skills used in the job."

It doesn't say anything about that time only counts if it is "stimulating" in fact it says the opposite, "However, since most time on the job is spent doing what you already know, not learning new things, every four hours on the job count as one hour of learning."

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

So you have 1 point in Driving. Big deal. You aren't going be entering any professional races or engaging in any high speed chases are you?

No, to the first, but when I was younger and dumber, I did the latter for fun.