Steel grip during my first time taking out our office Miata
 

Let me start off by saying I got my drivers’ license (regrettably) late. To save myself some face, I won’t say exactly how late but I had just gotten in the learning stage while the majority of people my age had a full fledged license – some for years. If you haven’t been able to tell already, I am not the same columnist writing about road trips all over the country. 

I finally received a conditional drivers’ license not too long ago. On that fateful day, my examiner determined that I was qualified for the road with the rest of the people in my age. Even though I was beyond thankful that I never needed to rely on public transit again, I was undeniably nervous about being on the road.

I had a long list of driving fears when I had just started driving but let’s just say there were a few driving situations that I was especially nervous about. Looking back, most are laughably embarrassing. For the sake of this blog and your entertainment, I’ll share them anyway:

  • Driving in unfamiliar parts of town, which is basically anywhere outside a mile radius of where I live

  • Being too close to the other cars on the road

  • The oddly specific situation of being stuck in the intersection on a red light and then triggering a red light camera

  • Brake-checkers 

It’s not surprising that I initially found driving to be a stressful chore. Not to mention, my driving confidence was on the empty side pretty much. And then soon after, I had my Thinkware X500 dash cam installed for work.

 
 
 
Look familiar? It’s the X500 on my windshield!

With the dash cam installed in my car, I immediately felt a sense of relief but most importantly, I felt protected. While dash cams unfortunately do not have the magical feature to magically form a barrier between us regular drivers and brake happy drivers (yet anyway), dash cams provide us with the evidence needed to claim our side of the story.

The first thing I did after I had the X500 installed was enable the Safety Camera Alert and Lane Departure Warning System features. These two features worked together to notify me of red light cameras in unfamiliar parts of town and when I was driving too close to the lane. 

 
 
 
Not all superheros wear capes. 2 out of 4 of mydriving fears vanished with these 2 features on the X500.

Keep in mind that some people were born to drive, but unfortunately for drivers like me, confidence on the road is something that comes with experience on the road. I can honestly say that having a dash cam installed in my vehicle helped rid most of my driving paranoia, and it certainly allowed me to focus on the road and steadily build my driving confidence.