Some facts and figures are hard to believe. You only have to listen to election promises, and the millions who will supposedly be better off under party A, party B or party C to be sceptical.

Other facts which surface from time to time, you know to be true. Such as: nearly 9,000 learner drivers have crashed during lessons with their parents. Given my experience, I have no problem believing that.

Research by an insurance company found that such lessons - usually given to avoid paying for professional sessions - often end with parents reaching for the handbrake or in a blazing row.

How, as a learner driver with my dad in the passenger seat, I avoided a major pile up, lord knows. I remember clearly the colour of my dad's face as I nervously edged through rush hour traffic on the way in and out of Darlington. We often made the 30-mile journey there, to my dad's workplace. Because the route included industrial areas, it was always heavy with lorries, thundering along throwing up dirt.

Not ideal for someone who kept confusing the horn with the windscreen washer.

My father didn't - he has mellowed slightly since - have the calmest of temperaments and my frequent washer-wiper-headlight-horn mistakes, plus my tentative manoeuvres on a fast road brought the veins in his temples into sharp relief. As the roads into the town centre got busier, and I became more anxious, he mutated from everyday dad into the creature that terrorises the mother ship in Alien.

I remember being terrified every time I reached for the gear stick. "NO. SECOND", he would bellow, followed by a sharp intake of breath. "SECOND. Haven't I taught you anything?" The answer - had I been brave enough to say it - would have been 'no, because I'm far too worried about upsetting you to think about the driving."

In Northallerton, a more sedate town where my driving test was to take place, things were no better, mainly because of the notorious 'prison corner', a hairpin affair that skirted the walls of the town's jail. So much was said about it among teenage learner drivers at my school, I imagined it to be hanging to the edge of a precipice, Swiss Alps-style. I would become worked up on the approach, hear my dad sigh, and literally close my eyes as I went round.

I'm sure my dad will agree he wasn't the best of instructors. Close family members never are. Things get too personal. Insults are traded over the gearstick. "Oh, I knew you couldn't apply yourself.", "Don't you listen to anything I say?", "Be careful, do you know how much this car cost?"

That's another reason why parental tuition is a bad idea. You'll be using (and abusing) your parents' car. Better to practise how not to wreck the clutch mechanism in someone else's.

Things deteriorated so much with my dad as tutor that his friend took over. A very nice man and calm (though probably screaming inside). He was great. Then, amazingly, my parents allowed my best friend, a farmer's daughter who had passed her test on her 17th birthday, to take me out. She was laid back and fun. I'm indebted to her. And to my dad because I learned something which comes in useful, especially when my children are quarrelling in the back - road rage.

Updated: 10:03 Tuesday, April 26, 2005