Driving games are a popular genre across all consoles, and have been for years. The first one I played would have been Gran Turismo, I think, and TOCA Touring Cars not long afterwards. I was 11 or so when I first took the wheel/controller.

I remember that I always sucked at TOCA and was happy to finish the qualifiers in second-to-last place (although sometimes this was because a car had been destroyed and knocked out of the race by my awful driving on the track!).

Over the years I played more and more driving games, including those which are not focused on racing but still required good, precise driving skills, for example: Stuntman, Driver, Crazy Taxi, Grand Theft Auto etc... I loved them so much that I invested in a steering wheel and pedals for my PlayStation and gradually became good enough at Ridge Racer Type 4 to win every race effortlessly.

Funny thing though, driving games. You can be an expert behind the controller, and a nightmare on the real roads or vice versa!

When I first started playing driving games I was well under the age to drive but there I was earning all the professional licences on Gran Turismo feeling like it was a real achievement. Yet there's no way I would be able to earn them in real life!

Well now I do drive for real and not too badly, if I may say so myself. I'm no pro on the roads, but I'm comfortable behind the wheel and find driving little more than a fun past-time and a useful way of getting from A to B. Do I race around the streets at well over 100mph, trying to escape the police or trying to pull off incredible death-defying stunts? Well ,no. So if I could once do these things on a video game and can now drive the real thing too, why is it that when I now return to driving games, I'm absolutely terrible at them?

Everything's reversed; I used to know how to win a race on a driving game but I wouldn't have been able to drive a real car. Now I can do the latter but can barely reverse in a straight line on my console!

I guess, like most things, practise makes perfect and also doing something often will help you improve. But for me, years of rust has set in so I am now terrible at driving games.

The answer is of course to get practising again and to dust off some of the titles I used to be quite good at. But you have to remember to draw the line between the real world and the virtual world because otherwise you'll find yourself driving like a maniac on the roads thinking "it doesn't matter if I crash/die/get caught as I just won't save!"

If you start thinking like this, you've been playing for too long!