Failing your driving test.

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.