How to Turn Left

Hiya all, today I'm going to post about driving.

When you start learning how to drive, even the simplest little tasks like turning left and right can seem daunting, so I've composed a nice little guide on how to turn left.

First of all, your preparation is pretty important. You should slow down as much as possible before you turn as it is easier to control your car at a lower speed. As my driving instructor says, cars are like men: they can only do one thing at a time. They can slow down, or they can turn, but they can't really do both at the same time, so make sure you do most of your slowing down before you get to the road you want to turn into. 15-25km/h is a good speed for turning at, less if it's raining.

When you turn left, the position of your car is also important. Most suburbian roads widen out at the end for a reason, and that reason is to help you turn left! Make full use of that curvy bit to help you turn. Here's a diagram (I even labelled the car for you, hehe):

The trick is that, to get in this position in the first place, you would already have had to have put some turn on the wheel. That way, when you actually make the turn, you don't have to turn the wheel much more.

Of course there are some roads that won't enable you to do this, but most of the time you can get a nice left-hand turn position going. Even when you're not turning left at the end of the road but down some other random road instead, you'll still find that there are curvy bits where the roads intersect and you can use these to your advantage.

I have another tip for you and that is in regards to steering. If you find that you can't steer sharply enough, try this steering method. To turn left, grab the top of the wheel with your left hand and pull anticlockwise. Push up anticlockwise with your right hand. Repeat the process as needed. To turn right, just reverse the directions.

To sum up- here are the steps that you should be taking when you do a left-hand turn on a normal suburban road:

1. Check your mirrors
2. Start slowing down
3. As you slow down, indicate that you're about to turn left.
4. Get into the left-hand turning position.
5. If you're on a terminating road about to enter a different road, you need to stop and check for traffic in the left lane. If it's all clear, then you can go.

By the way, if visibility is good, as in REALLY good and you can see for quite a while down the road, and you can see that there aren't any cars coming, then you don't need to stop completely at the end of a terminating road unless there's a stop sign. (You must stop before stop signs- even if you're stopped behind a car stopped at a stop sign, once that car moves off, you need to stop AGAIN at the stop sign BEFORE you move off. I learned this the hard way with my driving instructor- at least I didn't learn the hard hard way in a driving test...)

Hopefully that helps you all with turning left... if anyone has any other tips, or if there's anything incorrect in this post, let me know!