Lessons sink in with a learner son in the driving seat

SO there I was, in charge of a car that was pootling along at 50mph without my hands on the wheel, without my eyes on the road and without my feet on the pedals.

This was what it must feel like in a driverless car, I thought: that strange mix of freedom and dependence.

If ever I can afford to upgrade to a car with an onboard computer that takes all the decisions, I’ll know for certain what it is to put my life in the care of an intelligence that is at once like a human (created by us) and at the same time quite alien (it doesn’t behave like a human).

For now I get that feeling each time I am legally in charge but my learner-driver (human/alien) son is at the steering wheel.

The decision maker is an 18-year- old, and neuroscientists have proved in the last decade what every parent has known over thousands of years going back through the generations since the first lumpen young male stumbled out of the cave with a spear in hand in search of dinner and came back with the blade through his foot: teenagers are clumsy and do stupid things.

My son cannot carry a glass of cola up the stairs without adding a few more spills to a carpet that was once cream and pristine but is now patterned like a Dalmatian that has rolled in the mud.

He, like most immature males, gives no thought to danger, other than the idea that the unsafe is something exciting to be experienced while your mate videos and shares the results on social media.

Teenage boys do stupid things such as hit fireplace surrounds with lump hammers, whack tins of paint with two-handed axes and climb on the roofs of derelict barns “to see what would happen”.

They discover that what happens is a trip to casualty, with their dad in the driving seat.

They come back stitched and plastered up, having been given a strict lecture by the doctor that they mustn’t play rugby, or football or any contact sport, or climb trees or walls or barns or houses or ride bikes or scooters until the wound is healed.

They return from hospital and jump on their skateboard. Their dads scream, “Why on earth are you doing that when you’ve just been told not to do anything potentially dangerous for the next two months?”.

And the teenage boys reply, “But the doctor said nothing about skateboarding.”

Well, yes, now he is 18 and he is a teenage man. The only difference is that he can drive a car and vote and legally buy alcohol and I don’t ask “what on earth did you do that for?”, not because he doesn’t do it but because he is an adult so I’ve given up trying to persuade him stop doing stupid things.

I’ve read what the neuroscientists have to say about the teenage brain working differently. We grown-ups have everything wired into the prefontal cortex, the brain’s remote control that co-ordinates all the rest of our thinking organ.

Teenagers have dodgy connections that don’t get fixed until they are farther down the development road at age 25 or so.

The mechanical equivalent would be to install a self-driving computer brain into a 1970s saloon, then disconnect a few wires and mess with the brakes.

All I can do is sit back, grip the seat, and try to forget what I was like aged 18 as my son lifts the clutch. At his age I was about as practical and reliable as an Austin Allegro with that famous square steering wheel.