IT'S a little-known fact that on Sunday afternoons, places like business parks become a driving school for teenagers and their parents. On the day of rest, empty car parks and mini complexes of small roads are an ideal environment for those first driving lessons with a 17-year-old.

In the US, the driving test is on offer from age 16. I was so eager that I scheduled and passed mine on my 16th birthday and never looked back. But my decades of driving in all weather, traffic conditions, and varying road rules in different countries have so far been of precious little use to my daughter.

So I was glad to read the heartening assertion on the RoadDriver website that successful lessons are less dependent on the teacher's own driving experience than on their temperament and relationship with the learner.

Because breaking the process down to explain things step-by-step has been tricky.

Merely describing that sweet spot of relative pedal pressure between the clutch and acceleration required for a smooth start, for example, gave me pause even if I was highly motivated to get it right after the first whiplash-inducing shudder.

I'm getting better too at resisting foot slams on a non-existent brake on the passenger-side floor and white-knuckled clutching generally.

The anxiety that is harder to quell though is the familiar and overarching one: my daughter who still seems too young to be in charge of a mobile phone let alone a car (nevermind that I had been driving independently for a year by her age) will be on the road with thousands of other, flawed drivers.

Being in a car is one of life's more dangerous activities – in the UK five people die in a car accident every day and traffic accidents are the biggest killer of those aged 17 to 24.

Driverless car technology suddenly holds new appeal. The industry is due to get a government investment of £10m from January. Hmmm... could driverless cars be the answer to avoiding this particular worry?

The threat of whiplash and worse notwithstanding, I have found compensation in a blissful experience that I haven't enjoyed in years: while we're going round that deserted business park, my daughter looks to me for knowledge, and seems genuinely to believe that I have some that's useful.

And at least one carmaker estimates that it will be 2020 before self-driving cars are widely available. So now the question is, how do I stretch out those driving lessons in the business park for the next five years?

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