Driving lessons and tests
Were you one of those people who took to driving like a duck to water, and passed first time? My last instructor was one such.
My first ever driving lesson was a revelation - I came back having actually started a car and driven at a speed of about 3 mph around a square. It felt fantastic. I was euphoric. Sadly that feeling wore off very quickly to be replaced by sheer panic, and over the years that followed lessons stopped for months to let the fright settle down.
I couldn't get the hang of the clutch and was terrified of stalling and being crashed into. After a while I couldn't even be a passenger in a car without feeling acutely nervous.
To cut a long story short, I had a series of instructors, switched to an automatic, and 13 years after I'd first started lessons I actually passed my test on the 4th attempt. Notable fails included a previous attempt where I emerged out of the test centre, grazed a lorry and flattened the car's wing mirror within 30 seconds of beginning the test. The lorry was fine. The instructor said nothing, but must have failed me right at the start.
What about you?
My first ever driving lesson was a revelation - I came back having actually started a car and driven at a speed of about 3 mph around a square. It felt fantastic. I was euphoric. Sadly that feeling wore off very quickly to be replaced by sheer panic, and over the years that followed lessons stopped for months to let the fright settle down.
I couldn't get the hang of the clutch and was terrified of stalling and being crashed into. After a while I couldn't even be a passenger in a car without feeling acutely nervous.
To cut a long story short, I had a series of instructors, switched to an automatic, and 13 years after I'd first started lessons I actually passed my test on the 4th attempt. Notable fails included a previous attempt where I emerged out of the test centre, grazed a lorry and flattened the car's wing mirror within 30 seconds of beginning the test. The lorry was fine. The instructor said nothing, but must have failed me right at the start.
What about you?
Comments
Dad was my first driving teacher, and we were required to take driver's training and driver's ed in high school. The DT teacher was a creep, but a very good driving instructor. I took my test on a snowy January day and passed the first time.
I didn't have a car with a standard transmission until 1981, and took a few weeks to get the hang of it. Didn't get another automatic until the end of 2019, and still sometimes catch myself going for the clutch!
My instructor was ex-Special Forces and his approach to teaching was interesting: "I'll teach you two things: how to pass your driving test and how to drive - just don't confuse the two". He kept a stable of cars from an ancient Austin 7 to the latest model of Land Rover, plus an old Bedford truck, and expected his pupils to drive in whichever he turned up with. At least daily lessons, some at night, and he got you test-ready in 3 weeks. After you had passed your test he took you out on the motorway to teach safe overtaking, lane discipline, etc.
I did a perfect emergency stop, though.
Mr Nen, on the other hand, passed on his second attempt (aged 17) and is a very confident and natural driver. Nenlet1 passed on her second attempt: ditto. Nenlet2 passed on his fourth attempt: ditto.
I have major anxiety issues, and they only got worse when put in control of 2 tons of steel on wheels. My mother exacerbated this by doing a funny-not-so-funny "Auuuugggghhhh!" screaming freakout from the passenger seat every time she recognized a neighbor while we were out together. I gave up as quickly as I could and went off to college, where I thought no one would bother me.
But then came the future Mr. Lamb, who oozed his way into my life by announcing that he was now my elder brother (on the strength of my mom "adopting" him as a foreign student) and in Vietnam, older brothers get to tell younger sisters what to do. He was also largely imcomprehensible, which made it really hard to explain to him that I didn't want his help with driving, particularly when he refused to hear it. Which is how I wound up somehow in the driver's seat of his stickshift pickup truck, getting onto the 5 freeway in Southern California, during the middle of rush hour.
... at which point he proceeded to ... go to sleep. Seriously, he curled up and started snoring, I think. And naive me looked over at him and thought: I guess I must not be as bad as I thought, if he can sleep? and actually developed some confidence. (Years later he confessed that this was all a ruse done for exactly this purpose.)
Since I had to drive to and from school every weekend for roughly an hour in the aforesaid stop-and-go traffic, I got a LOT of practice--with Mr. Lamb snoozing away next to me...
And I finally learnt to drive.
I'm now trying to figure how I can help my son over the same hurdle. I don't think I could carry off the pretend sleep thing, so I'm relying on repetition and extreme boredom (do this stage of practice till you beg to be let to do something more exciting). I figure boredom is incompatible with terror and anxiety, so maybe this will work.
The ex-army instructor was tough and unbending and I got the Army-style training. He was the one who met me at Oxford station one winter night to drive home through the dark, via country back roads where the oncoming traffic dazzled me and I could barely make out the ditches at the side or where the cliffside drops were. I made it home, but staggered out of the car shaking and unable to say anything but expletives for about the next quarter of an hour.
I didn't dislike him but he didn't care much for me, and he could be as sexist as hell - "I know you're having difficulty with parking. Women do" - and after I failed my first test I changed instructors. The next one was the one who finally got me through.
(Little known fact, people with bipolar disorder are required to register it with the UK driving license organisation as they are considered risky drivers, presumably due to their mania)
The examiner probably thought I was a ringer but he did pass me anyway.
After a few months of ‘proper’ lessons with a driving school I passed first time, then he told me that as I’d now learnt to pass the test he would teach me how to drive.
Mr Bee and I have just ordered our first automatic car, which neither of us have driven before. The test drive went well but we are both nervous about re-learning how to drive.
Did take me a bit of getting used to just using the right foot though, when I'm more inclined to use the left.
When we went to Canada, the traffic gods had decided that it was too risky for examiners to take candidates out on the road, so plastic cones were set up in a shopping centre car park (in Valleyfield, Québec) and we were walked around the course and told what to do. The examiner watched from a safe distance while we performed, never getting out of second gear. There were people failing that test. I think it may have changed since then.
Then there's my brother-in-law who passed the test nearly 60 years ago and has never driven since. In his case this is probably a Good Thing.
I've only owned an automatic for a very brief period, and am convinced that a manual is much safer in the winter, where you need more control over power delivered to the wheels, and less need for the brakes.
My boyfriend now husband started me on driving. He is very spatial and couldn't believe I found it hard to tell which gear I was in just by feeling. I spent a few weekends knocking down weeds in one of his family paddocks because I was too nervous to be on the road. After deciding that driving lessons were not good for our relationship, I had paid lessons with a driving school. I began with one and moved onto another when the lady instructor moved away.
I used to have lessons in my lunch hour at work, picked up and dropped back to the workplace, which worked well. At weekends I'd have additional practice with the husband.
Because of my spatial inability I remember the driving instructor putting a matchstick in the button in the centre of the bonnet to help me with my parallel parking. That was left in place until it fell out. I had been having lessons intermittently for over a year when I went for my test. Sitting the test all was going well until, as I came to the bottom of a hill to give way, I stalled the car. I didn't fail, because I changed down to first and restarted the car without panicking. Had I not passed, I know I would have lost confidence.
I've always avoided parallel parking but feel a bit more confident to do so now that I have a reversing camera on my car. I did one this year and that was my first in about 30 years!
When my husband sat his test it was drive around the block, hill start, parallel park and drive back to the police station for the paperwork. When I learned 8 years later, police were no longer involved, there were skills to be ticked off in order to pass.
Son and daughter have both had lessons with Dad, daughter also had driving school lessons. Son is still learning, he will have to have an assessment in addition to sitting the driving test because of his medical issues. Another layer of complexity navigate, but it's important that he does not endanger other road users and we understand that.
I had to do a real emergency stop when a motorcycle shot out of a side road. - the examiner wound his window down and shouted at the rider.
She passed her test eight years ago so she needs to refresh her skills. Where they live there are courses with roads, lights, junctions, roundabouts etc which you can pay a small fee to use. Only five cars are allowed on it at a time, so it’s a safe place to practice. She soon regained her confidence.
Apart from teaching me to drive my instructor when I was 17 gave me a useful lesson for when I was teaching - never do a turn in the road too close to a lamppost. I did destroy one.
I object to the idea posted above and often stated that learning to pass a driving test and learning to "drive" are two different things. If you can drive properly you can pass the test. In the UK, anyway, I can't speak for other places. The test is to see if you are safe on the road and then you build experience and become a better driver every time you get in the car. Anyone who says that they would not be able to pass a test today is in effect saying I am a danger to other road users.
The examiner was wrong. It’s documented in the official guidelines that if a genuine emergency stop is carried out, that will count and be marked as such and the exercise doesn’t need to be performed
I find it's easy if you pick a fairly empty stretch of road. I have found out that once you know an area well, you can avoid all the difficult manoevres
When we have been to Sydney I'm always astonished by people parking near the shops and parallel parking when the traffic is busy. I guess if it is all you know, then you just get on with it!
Funny you should mention that. In a small town in Ontario, there is a lamp post still bearing a mark from where our Older Child, making a turn like that, introduced it to our two week old VW, shortly after passing her test. I used to be a very trusting father. Her own daughter has been driving legally in rural Vermont since the age of 15.
Younger Child is now a New Yorker. I asked her about a nasty looking dent on the side of her car. She was unconcerned. "That's where an ambulance hit us". She is very relaxed about these things.
I still remember that feeling of being alone in the car for the first time and realizing that this was it, it was all down to me now, no dual pedals, no instructor to spot anything I'd missed. Yikes. But somehow I survived those first hair-raising days.
I failed the first time - not on anything major, but I had one too many minor errors that pushed me over the threshold. Passed the second time.
Passed my US test first time, but that was a much easier test.
My second kid is currently taking lessons. He's doing pretty well, but has a tendency to drive too slowly. That's better than a tendency to drive like a maniac, I think, and I'm sure he'll come up to a better speed with more practice. He has the same instructor that #1 had - the school has a bunch of instructors, but he'll only take classes or lessons with this one guy. Which is fine, because he's good.
Not looking forward to what will happen to our insurance when he passes, though (teen male driver living in home is going to be expensive).
In 11th grade, our gym teacher began driver's education for all of us who had turned sixteen. I watched the films (the one about sliding on ice nearly turned all of my hair grey!) and did the written assignments but wasn't very enthused. I got my learner's permit when I was seventeen but no one ever had time to take me driving. Long story short, my oldest sister tried to teach me by having me drive around her church's parking lot but I kept steering into a large pile of broken glass! 🤣. She told me to drive out onto the main (busy) road in front of the church. I did but refused to go any faster than about 25 m.p.h. I was absolutely terrified. I only drove a few yards and then pulled over and jumped out saying, "No, no, I don't like this! Driving is not for me!" and made her get into the driver's seat. And that was my first and last driving lesson.
I only live in cities that have great public transportation.