Failing your driving test.

(also i failed my cycling proficiency but that was during a thunderstorm)

will (hopefully) be rectifying this this year

oh, and the reason i even got a license was because my then girlfiend kept bugging me to. as soon as i got my license we broke up. i drove for about a year and then i moved back to philadelphia and i haven't driven since.

I don't have a licence and have no intention of taking my test ever, so the above situation is something I dread. It certainly wasn't a problem with my last girlfriend. Neither of her parents had a licence and neither do either of mine - it makes a big difference I think.

My story as well.

And I smashed up my first car, but I blame that on God. (Skidded on wet pavement as I approached a red light; trying to brake but they wouldn't hold.)

I have never seen anyone reverse around a corner! If I did I'd probably think they were a spy or something.

What is this mentalist "reverse around a corner" thing that they make you do in the UK/Ireland? Are people expected to do this on a regular basis?

1. Hit car in high school parking lot while turning too sharp
2. Rear-ended truck while driving to school in heavy traffic
3. Smashed oncoming Chevy while turning left with view partially blocked
4. Hit 6" curb in middle of 3-way intersection while looking for street sign in DC
5. Nailed median on 695 north of Bmore after falling asleep at the wheel

My girlfriend in HS passed the test easily whilst stoned, so it can't be that hard.

I'm 32 and I still can't drive and have no intention of starting.

Kids, can you say "Lucky"?

However, I managed not to screw up too badly on the second one and the instructor was very nice. She told me her only criticsm was that I hadn't "scanned" a certain intersection for cars until just before I passed through it. I realized this meant she had spent the whole drive making note of the motion of my eyes. If I had known she was going to do that I'd still be riding my bike today.

first time i failed the parallel parking section. i was really peeved, but it wasn't the test giver's fault, it was mine. that was thursday morning. so thursday afternoon i practiced parallel parking all evening.

somehow got to reschedule for next morning. got to the test, and the instructor claimed that the VIN number on my insurance card (that i took the test on thursday with) had a typo and she wouldn't administer the test. so i called insurance company, had them write up a new card, email it to me, i printed it out, and got back in the queue to take the test. did it parallel parking perfectly, did perfectly on road test... and then the instructor claimed that my bumper was an inch over the white stopline! nb, even if that wasn't the most inconsequential bullshit ever, it definitely wasn't! i stopped well clear of each stopsign + line but i think bc of volvo deep passenger seat and long bumper that she didn't have an adequate read on how far away it was. i protested vigorously and we compromised by having a third test scheduled for this morning.

this time everything went perfect for realz, but even at the end the jackass administering the test refused to tell me i passed. he was making marks on my permit and there was silence and finally he's like, "ok, follow me inside to take your photo." like god forbid you just tell me i passed. would that bring too much joy??

the worst part is that i've driven to the mountains, at night, through snowbanks, done hundreds of hours of highway driving, incredibly safe driver, etc, but bc of stuff like parallel parking, or not stopping early enough in 15mph mall parking lot, i had to take it 3 times. whatever, it's all over now, thankfully. but it's ridiculous how, at least in PA, the material you're tested on (and that they're so strict about) have nothing to do with actual RL driving. like, you could pass this test and never have merged on a highway or driven over 15mph. it's insane.

arguing with test administrator generally not a good idea, but the wait time for tests is 6 weeks and i wanted to get it done this week. seems like a month between first time i took it and this afternoon (i was stressing hugely about the whole thing), but really only 6 days passed.

i failed the first time. after doing awesome on the parallel parking, i was headed back to the building on a two-lane one-way road (like a highway) there was a sign that said 'stay left' and i was like that doesn't make sense, there's two lanes here and nothing else going on -- why would you go in the passing lane for no reason? and thus i failed, for thinking too much. passed two days later.

for some reason the driving test in pennsylvania was not entirely standardized at that time -- i knew ppl who went great distances to sites that did not require parallel parking.

I don't know if I did then but I love parallel parking now.

i became a great parallel parker overnight. just took a few concentrated hours of practice. last night we went to south street and i found a tight spot and just swooped in. my wife (who got her license in a chicago suburb that didn't have PP on the test) was really impressed; after a decade of driving she still can't parallel park.

Driving in Boston you absolutely have to know how to do it. I guess that's why I'm really good at it (and therefore like it) just years of practice. I definitely didn't always like it though as I just remembered literally getting out and making other people do it for me when I first started driving.

it's kinda the most difficult thing you do with a car! most of the time you don't need such precise movement, but getting into a spot only slightly bigger than your car requires such careful maneuvering. even knowing the basic technique (the first cut in, then turning the wheels all the other way) doesn't help with all the nuance, like knowing exactly how far back to go before beginning the turn, how close to the curb you are, how close to the car behind you you can get, and then self-correcting if you go a little too far or not far enough... and language is really insufficient for fully explaining it. i just found that i understood more and more about parking it implicitly but not in any way i could explain. and i can tell other nuances that i'm not great at yet but that i want to get better at. (tl;dr)

For my first Australian Driver's license when I was 18 or so, my instructor and I practiced parallel parking to the point where I could do it in my sleep, I was like A #1 parallell parking guru. Day of the test everything is going smoothly, we get to the parallel parking portion of the test and I overcorrected and mounted the goddamn curb on the first try. Automatic fail.

I was heartbroken. And my instructor was all, "duuuuude what happened? you had those cold yesterday!" But I put on my big girl pants and got back on the horse, retook the test I think a week later BOOM in your face parallel parking!

For my American DL test I passed the first time around, but the instructor pointed out that I had been 5 miles over the speed limit for almost the whole test -- I was SO spazzed out about all the road rules and whatnot I didn't check my speedometer once! He was a humorless dick, literally sighed audibly when he gave me my passing grade like it physically PAINED him to do so.

Mordy otm about not actually testing driving of any real tangible level. It's all just toodling around surface streets and stopping at stop signs. Even the driving test in Australia seemed at least a little more rigorous.

seriously. they should've gone out with me when i drive down the highway at night in the rain w/ a baby in the backseat and then tell me i don't pass :P

Oddly I lost all my parallel parking mojo when I changed what side of the road I drive on. Seriously, all my muscle memory is for the opposite side of the car, opposite shoulder, everything...even in an automatic I suck ASS at it now. Plus I have a much harder time in our new car gauging where the back of the car is, or the front for that matter. They drop away so dramatically that I always end up erring on being too far away from a car than edging much closer.

lolol, rereading this thread i noticed this:

If you never take it, you can't fail!

:/

― Mordy, Tuesday, January 13, 2009 1:09 PM (3 years ago)

didn't even remember writing it but otm

i took the test in a honda two-seater, so there was no problem fitting in the parking space -- just had to be the appropriate distance from the curb

yeah that was what was so RAGH about failing my test, the car was one of thos silly little Hyundai bubble cars, like the EASIEST car in the world to parallel park! how do you even screw that up!

Seventeen years since my last attempt, and with first child due in 10 days (hence resuming lessons to be able to give my wife a break from doing all the driving), I passed the UK driving test this morning. Feels pretty surreal tbh, had almost resigned myself to the life of a passenger or pedestrian...

Good luck! Happy (but vigilant) motoring!

Thanks - am going to do a supplementary 6hr course with my (brilliant) instructor. My determined aim in going back to lessons was not just to pass the test but to learn to be a safe and considerate driver - imminent precious cargo and all that :)

Having my second attempt in one week. Didn't do too badly last time but I failed with one major fault which ruined it all for me. I was fairly relaxed back then, just treated it the same as a lesson.
But now I'm a bundle of nerves - my new job, starting in September, requires me to be able to drive and the wait time between tests seems unreasonably long. Think my last test was in April? Paying for top-up lessons is expensive and even worse is I don't want the embarrassment of telling my new employer I can't drive.

palms sweating just thinking about it.

How've you managed to get a job that requires you to drive when you haven't passed your test yet?

And good luck, btw.

haha, i don't know! when i applied, back before my OG test, I wrote on the app that I was due to take it. once they offered me the job they wrote again asking 'are you still going to pass your test? we're conscious that there is travel involved around the country'

PS, if i'm ever round your way (which could be likely) i may give you a heads-up.

PPS thanks!

I'm doing the same thing atm. I've kept my license current but, before this past weekend, I hadn't driven in 20 years. I think there are probably a lot of people who can't or don't drive as adults, particularly in the city. But, yeah, I feel you. Motorists and bicyclists and pedestrians are demonstrably worse at doing what they do than they were in the '90s, and having to monitor every dumb and distracted thing they do while also trying to relearn how to manage a left hand turn onto a busy road was nerve wracking. Think I'll have a few stiff drinks before my next lesson.

what gets me is how long it's taken me to learn. i had a bunch of lessons back around 2007, even drove to Cambridge and back during one lesson but ended up being made redundant and running out of money. Must have taken lessons up again last October, so it's been almost a year of having a lesson almost every week and I'm still not confident.

driving should be illegal i think

You'll want a trendy bike in that Bristol.

yeah i do. i really do.

I passed! third go around. yip!!

yeah i passed it a couple of months ago on my 3rd attempt too

I confess: I am basically middle-aged and I still can't drive

have had lots of lessons (like, lots) and never really felt ready enough to go for the test - the instructor suggested it repeatedly but I still felt like stuff was going from "this is fine" to "this is not fine and I hadn't noticed the crucial not-fine thing in time" too quickly and too often

I had a bad lesson 3 weeks ago and since then the instructor has a) not turned up to our regular slot b) not texted or given any warning or explanation of not turning up c) not answered his phone

feel kind of like I've been stood up on a date. a not very good date where I pay £35 and either it's boring or I have one of those not-fine moments and feel like shit at the end but still have to do it again next week. well, now I don't, I guess, except certain people in my life are very keen on the "why can't you drive yet" and get all their friends to ask how it's going every time I meet them, and it is of course a useful life skill and some jobs demand it, so I suppose I'll have to. have to find someone else and go through the whole first-date connection-or-shame process again. ???

I don't know what this rant was about either. I'm going to have a drink (couldn't do that before driving) and maybe go back to bed, idunno.

I also can't cycle. Had a bike as a kid where I could put my feet on the ground while sitting on it (apparently this is not how adult bikes work?) and also probably had stabilisers until about a week before I fell off and decided never to get on it ever again.

This combination is Fucking Weird in an adult, I realise. I think I might be dyspraxic. Or I might be making stuff up and dyspraxia might not even exist but if it does I definitely wouldn't have it (<- what the people in my life who nag me about driving tell me, but probably also what the NHS would tell me if I turned up as a fully-grown female adult and asked for a diagnosis).

I'd say "roll on self-driving cars" but I know even if they do ever become a thing you'll need a driving licence to use one.

I'm 43, haven't driven a car since I was 19. Upthread I mentioned that I failed three driving tests and gave up because for a 19 year old at university it was becoming stupidly expensive. The mounting costs were my go-to official excuse for not having a driving license, but as a financially stable middle aged adult that really doesn't hold water any more.

I hadn't noticed the crucial not-fine thing in time

^^^ This is basically my experience. I can operate a car, in the sense that I can work the controls and get it to go in the direction I want. But when other people are added in, it seems that I don't have sufficient awareness of my surroundings or the ability to concentrate enough to be able to drive a car safely. I was thinking about this last week and considering the possibility that maybe I have changed in the close to a quarter century since, as I'm able to hold down a job now, which I wasn't able to do back then because lol airhead. But I still have doubts. I guess I don't want to be responsible for someone else getting hurt or injured - something that I've heard a couple of other non-driving adults of my acquaintance mention.

No-one's pushing me to pass my driving test. My boss mentioned a couple of times three years ago - back when a colleague passed his test - that it would be useful if I could drive. But there are plenty of other people in the office who can drive and plenty of tedious customer facing jobs in the office that I can be assigned, so it's not like I'm going to lose my job. However it makes getting a job elsewhere a bit difficult, and I want to switch careers as well.

not answered his phone

Driving instructors aren't all tossers, but in my experience something like 75%+ are.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RD5M7ZczriI
Also it turns out that nothing makes me angry faster than being told to do something one eighth of a second before I was going to do it. I was like that at 19 and other non-driving related experiences tell me that I still am.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcrKcfDaUlY

I have never even taken a driving lesson in my life, aps. Even once a boss offered to pay for my first ten lessons and also a significant payrise, if I would just show a willing to learn to drive. I turned him down and I admitted I had absolutely zero intention of ever learning to drive. if you can get by with taxis, trains and the ol' peasant wagons, I say fuck driving. And fuck idiots that clog up the roads, polluting the whole place and think the Thatcher buswanker quote is big + clever.

I drove from 16 to 33 or 34 - I remember the last time I got behind the wheel was a big white truck from a car sharing service (I guess you call them car clubs?) and I drove like a cautious old man to and from a meeting in McLean, Virginia, before they had built out the Silver Line. I remember surprising myself with how risk-averse my driving was but frankly I had always been a shit driver and it was the first time I'd driven in a long while. Shortly thereafter my license expired and I kept forgetting to go back to the DMV and get it renewed, and then eventually I checked on the date and it turned out if I ever wanted to renew it I would have to take both the written knowledge test and the road skills test all over again (>545 days).

Anyway, I'm with calzino now. I occasionally (i.e. ~3 times a year) feel guilty that my wife does all the driving that our family requires, but that is a pretty vanishingly small amount and frankly she prefers to drive than having anybody else do it for her. I've seen the way she talks to my father-in-law as he attempts to navigate when they come to visit, I'm not the man for that job. Also, fuck driving, especially parking.

As for bicycling, there's a video on youtube of 53 crashes at one railway grade crossing in Knoxville that I can't watch all the way through because I keep thinking it's going to turn into a snuff film at any moment, so fuck bicycling too imo.

We're getting rid of the car next month.

Driving was a must for the past decade odd but there's no justification for it now tbh. Costs and environment and hassles of ownership.

Honestly think that if I had been driving all these years, years would definitely have been knocked off my life by now.

From stress? Yeah seriously it's a wonder I haven't gone grey yet

Don't drive if you can help it, it's a helluva drug

I also can't cycle. Had a bike as a kid where I could put my feet on the ground while sitting on it (apparently this is not how adult bikes work?) and also probably had stabilisers until about a week before I fell off and decided never to get on it ever again.

― a passing spacecadet

i never learned to ride a bike either. i don't know what "dyspraxic" is but my coordination is shit. i did get my driver's licence, because in many parts of america you can't do anything without one, but not until i was 24. if it's any consolation, at least in america you don't need to be a good driver to get a driver's licence. i passed mine first try and except for one of my brothers i'm the worst driver i know. i don't have the skills to properly focus on the road. my mind wanders. i don't notice things i ought to. i drift out of lanes, go too fast or too slow, and terrify any passengers i happen to have, which doesn't happen because if i'm in the car with anybody else they're the ones driving. back in indiana we chose where we lived exclusively based on its proximity to my workplace, on the grounds that the less time i spent driving to work the more likely my continued survival was. ultimately though we just wound up moving to a city where driving isn't as much of a life necessity.

You are all my people. Thank you!

Now why must everyone else be all Jeremy Clarkson about everything?

nothing makes me angry faster than being told to do something one eighth of a second before I was going to do it -- frustrated lol of recognition at this, wrt driving and also e.g. taking the bins out or emailing Accounts or ringing my dad on his birthday or anything, really

I'd say "roll on self-driving cars" but I know even if they do ever become a thing you'll need a driving licence to use one

well, as another non-driver, I'd say, yes, *this* and the fact that I am not convinced that simply automating the vast numbers of often single occupancy vehicles is the answer to anything. George Monbiot said as much in a recent article. Far better to have lots of self driving minibuses and taxis which always carry multiple people....then you could reduce traffic congestion as well and we *wouldn't* to get driving licenses to travel in self driving vehicles.

five tests, five fails. fuck it, i live in a v flat city with good buses

anyways you can read + listen to music on buses, driving isn't freedom, its absolute tyranny really.

I had a bad lesson 3 weeks ago and since then the instructor has a) not turned up to our regular slot b) not texted or given any warning or explanation of not turning up c) not answered his phone

This sucks, a good instructor should have experienced hundreds of "bad lessons" and be grown up enough to deal with it and move on.

Spacecadet - On the off chance you live in North-Northwest London, I have a fantastic instructor I can recommend. I am a super clumsy, spatially unaware nervous person and managed to pass on my 2nd test.

Christ though, London drivers are fucking dicks. I've only been driving a few weeks and I get consistently honked by people behind me for not committing suicide in front of them. It's like - you know what - I'm gonna wait till the traffic turns green. And maybe I won't turn left while there's a massive truck speeding towards me from the right.

I think there must be another thread about driving tests because I'm sure I've posted about this before, but I failed 6 times when I was 21/22 and gave up. The cost of owning a car seems prohibitive to me but people earning a lot loss money than me seem to be able to afford it somehow. It'd be nice if I was able to hire a car every now and then though. Not sure I will ever be able to pass the test since it's supposed to be harder than it was in the 90s.

For those who tried in their youth, failed, and now face trying again as mature adults with trepidation: I failed my (UK) driving test three times in my teens and early 20s. Gave up as have always lived in major cities with decent public transport, and never really needed a car. Was inspired to get back on the horse when my wife was pregnant with our first child, primarily to rectify the unfairness of her having to do any/all driving for us and in case she had a c-section and was prevented from driving. I got a good instructor via a recommendation, applied myself to 2-hour lessons at least once a week and on an icy morning in January 2013 I passed my test on the first re-attempt since 1995. Three weeks later my oldest son was born by c-section and I was able to drive them both home from the hospital, if nervously. If I can do it, you all can do it.

I'm attempting to learn to drive again after a break of approx 20 years. Fucking hate it so far! My favourite part is when the instructor tells me I need to stop panicking, because I hadn't thought of that before.

Wow are you me from the future?

(I'm in a similar situation: haven't tried driving a car for actually 25 years now, from what I now know about panic attacks I'm pretty sure that I used to have one each time I got behind the wheel)

I mean I know that a person's shirt shouldn't be soaked through with sweat while driving a car but 19 year old snoball didn't have a clue.