Lesson 10: Speed Management
Speed at its adult range, lane discipline, wet-road stopping distance.
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EDT Session 11 of 12
Driving Calmly.
Fatigue, emotion, fitness to drive. The closest the RSA gets to a psychology lesson.
Lesson 11 covers the conditions that make a driver unfit and the skills for staying calm when the road gets frustrating.
- 60 minutes
- One learner, one instructor
- RSA-set syllabus
- Logged on MyRoadSafety within ten working days
Around 6 minutes to read.
The limit for learners is 20 milligrams.
20mg per 100ml of blood. That's five times tighter than the full-licence limit of 50mg. A single pint puts you over. A half pint is already most of your ceiling. That's the whole rule.
Ireland lost 174 people on the roads in 2024. Driver error, including fatigue, distraction, and impairment, is a contributory factor in roughly four out of five fatal collisions.
RSA 2024 road deaths statement.
What the lesson covers
Eight things you leave with.
Pulled faithfully from the RSA's Lesson 11 syllabus. Each concept is a short, specific beat.
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Fitness to drive.
Legal, medical, situational. You need to know when not to drive, even when you're technically permitted to.
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Alcohol limit for learners: 20mg per 100ml.
Five times tighter than the full-licence limit. A pint puts you over. A half pint is already close.
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Drugs and prescription medicine.
Some prescription drugs impair driving as much as alcohol. "Do not operate heavy machinery" on the label is also a driving warning.
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Fatigue.
Sleep deprivation slows reaction time as much as alcohol. A one-second micro-sleep at 80 km/h is twenty-two metres of road gone with your eyes closed.
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Emotion.
Anger, anxiety, grief, elation. All of them degrade judgement. The technique is simple. Park. Breathe. Resume.
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Peer pressure.
"Push it, we're late." You're the one with the licence on the line and the insurance in your name. Saying no is a skill. You rehearse it.
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Mobile phones.
Holding, touching, or looking at a phone while driving is illegal in Ireland. Hands-free is legal and still degrades attention. Cognitive load is the problem, not the handset.
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Stress behind the wheel.
Drop your shoulders. Lengthen your breath on the next red light. Slow your decisions. Speed up after.
What goes wrong in this hour
The mistakes that come up every time.
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Underestimating fatigue.
Pulling an all-nighter and assuming you're fine. You're not.
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Driving angry.
Just after an argument. Just after bad news. The speed and the lane changes get impulsive.
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Giving in to the passenger.
Comply once, it gets easier to comply the next time.
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Assuming hands-free fixes phone distraction.
It doesn't. The conversation is the load.
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Ignoring medication warnings.
The small print on the box is written for this exact reason.
Practice
Quiz 1. Am I fit to drive?
The learner limit is 20 milligrams per 100 millilitres. A pint puts you over. That's one rule. Try the quiz.
You finished a pint of lager with dinner forty minutes ago. Lesson 11 just reminded you of the 20mg learner limit. What do you do about driving home?
Quiz 1 of 3
Pick the response that fits the 20mg learner rule.
The learner alcohol limit in Ireland is 20 milligrams per 100 millilitres of blood. A single pint of standard lager or stout puts almost every adult over that ceiling. The only safe answer is not to drive. "Feeling fine" is not a legal defence. Time, not effort, is the only way alcohol clears.
The rule most learners get wrong is the painkiller one. If the label says "do not operate heavy machinery," the car is heavy machinery.
The hour, walked through
How Lesson 11 runs.
The lesson starts parked. Usually ten minutes at the kerb, with the engine off, talking through the scenarios: alcohol, drugs, fatigue, emotion, distraction, peer pressure. Then the car moves. The route is picked for frustration density, not distance: heavy Dublin traffic, slow cyclists ahead with no legal overtake, a red light cycle that won't budge. You drive it, and the lesson covers what you're feeling as you drive it.
Halfway in, you're usually asked to describe a moment you felt pressured behind the wheel already. Self-awareness is half the lesson. The other half is practising the techniques in the same car that triggered the frustration. Some lessons include short video clips of impaired-driving reactions watched parked, engine off, as part of the fitness-to-drive segment.
The lesson ends with a logbook stamp and feedback. The feedback often focuses on what you did under pressure, not just what you did well.
Between this lesson and the next
What to practise with your Sponsor.
- Have the conversation. With the Sponsor, or with a friend. Name a moment you drove angry or tired. Walk it back. That counts as practice.
- Drive a frustrating route on purpose. A traffic jam. A slow progression. Stay calm on it. Don't chase the gap.
- Read the Rules of the Road sections on fitness to drive, alcohol limits, and mobile phone law. Short chapters. Read them twice.
Practice
Quiz 2. Peer pressure scripts.
You're the one with the licence. They aren't. Pick the response you'd actually use. Interactive version lands with Phase 2.
Peer-pressure scenario quiz. Coming in the next release.
The script isn't the point. The practice of saying it is.
Pairs with the theory test
What this lesson overlaps with on paper.
Book it
Ready for this one?
Lesson 11 runs for sixty minutes and fits any point after Lesson 8 is logged on the RSA system. If you're up to Lesson 11, you're most of the way through. If you haven't started yet, Lesson 1 is where you begin.
Dublin pickup, D1 to D18. Dual controls. Logbook stamped and uploaded within ten working days.