As far as rites of passage go, passing your driver’s test is right up there with, uh, another important milestone that probably happened within a few years of that time, and possibly also involved a car. Everyone remembers their first time, which was hopefully your only time (reminder: I am talking about taking your driver’s test, not the other thing). Like a lot of you, I aced the test on the first try. Or tests, I should say, since there’s that written exam too, but what I’m Autopian Asking ya’ll about today is the far more intimidating road test.
I don’t recall what model car I took the road test in, but I do remember the guy scoring in the passenger’s seat (not a sex reference) had a strong aura of I don’t want to be here, which did not bode well. I was already on high alert for any potential test-ruining goofs, but I notched it up a little more as it seemed this guy would relish failing me.
He didn’t waste any time, either. Before I had even swung the door shut, he was encouraging me to “just go ahead and pull away.” Not before I check my mirrors and we both put our seatbelts on, thank you very much! The hand-signaling portion of the test went on way too long, and he chose the tightest possible situations for the parallel parking and three-point turn tests. There was no power steering to help me out, but I met the challenge. When he opened his door to check the distance to the curb after I parallel parked, I could sense his disappointment when he saw the gap was just right. Now give me my license.
I asked the gang if they had any road-test stories to share. Mark had some hard luck, but persevered:
Took me three tries. We had one tester in my hometown who failed EVERYONE, and I got her twice in a row, and she failed me for piddly shit like parking too far from the curb. Third time, I got the “nice” one, and aced it.
Brian got his license with nary a point to spare:
It was my 16th birthday, and my mother drove me to the testing site in Goshen, New York. I took the test in her white third-gen Honda CR-V, which I knew wasn’t a very good car even then.
The test went off without a hitch, or at least I thought so. I stopped at every light, signaled correctly, and parallel-parked flawlessly. Little did I know I’d made a wide right turn somewhere along the test route, for which I was docked five points. Thankfully, I still passed. I’m sure I’d do far worse today, for some reason.
Your turn!
How Did Your Driving Test Go?
Top graphic image: DepositPhotos.com
It’s been more than 35 years, but I still remember it. The written test was no problem as I had just finished driver’s ed. The hard part of the driving test was finding a car that was road legal to take it in. My mom’s car was one of a string of shitheaps that sometimes ran, but often didn’t. I think my grandmother took me for the test in her car. I think it was a chevy, but I don’t remember for sure. It was fairly new and ran well enough. Anyway, I lived in a very small town in eastern Colorado, so the test was minimal. We pulled out of the parking lot and drove around the block, at which point the examiner said to pull back into the lot and park. Then he looked at me and said something to the effect of, “You’re a good driver. You passed.” and that was it.
I had passed driver’s ed and I do think I was a decent driver, but damn, the test should have involved more skills than five right turns and pulling into a parking spot.
Oooh boy. This was a fun story. So I took driver’s ed through my high school. I’ve always been a geek, so I studied the book thoroughly, and given that I had covered more miles in the passenger seat of my Dad’s semi by 16 than many people cover in their lifetime, I understood the rules of the road, both real and enforced, and negligible and ignored. I had ridden quads and pocket bikes for years, driven a forklift at the truck yard, tractors on the farm, and an occasional jaunt down a country road in a pickup. I had it in the bag for the test at school, and aced it.
However: the state of Illinois does ‘check dates’. Meaning if your birthday is on a given day, you will be required to perform a driving test at the DMV, to ensure that the schools aren’t just passing everyone. We go a couple towns over to a more rural community with a much less busy DMV, and lo and behold, I am a check date baby. No worries, we head out to my mom’s 2007 Chevy trailblazer- decent visibility, good turning radius, and plenty of hours of experience racked up. We check lights and signals, all okay. The instructor gets in and tells me to head off in a certain direction. We head through a ~50 year old residential area, where I had never been before, and I drive straight through the next intersection. “Fail!” She says. “Head back to the DMV.”.
“What!?”
“You drove through a stop sign. You failed. Also, you didn’t have your foot on the brake when you put the car into drive. So I don’t think you would have passed anyway.”
Mind you, the Trailblazer has an interlock where the shifter cannot be moved out of park without a foot on the brake…
After leaving with my mom, we circle around the same intersection to see what happened. Only to find that the line on the road was completely faded away aside from right against the curb, and the stop sign was 12″ behind a willow tree. Completely invisible, and totally rigged.
I went to another DMV the next week and passed with no deductions.
Years ago I moved for work and the state I moved to made me take a written and driving test, despite having had a valid driver’s license for many, many years in other states. As I pulled into the DMV I noticed a hidden stop sign tucked behind a bush on the driving course. The examiner was audibly annoyed when I stopped for the hidden stop sign, then told me after that he fails nearly everyone because of the hidden sign and was ticked I knew his secret. Some people live to make the lives of others harder, and it seems they find the DMV a willing employer.
Mine was interesting, i think.
My tester- picture an angry cedric the entertainer. Loud, angry sounding. Im in a driving schools 03ish chevy malibu. We pull away from the curb, he immediately is yellin ‘TURN LEFT UP.HERE. THERE, YOU SEE?’ I make the left, theres a box truck blocking 2/3 the street and its a blind corner. I pause, and hes just like ‘WELL? GO AROUND’. So it looks safe, i go. Car comes flyin and i jam on the brakes, he jerks forward and I think i failed immediately. He looks at me all mad, then says ‘Youre good. Keep going, we can ignore that.’ Back to yelling after.
I passed, just forgot to signal pulling over at the end.
Remember the day perfectly. Suburban NY, about 60 mile out from NYC, small town. Took the test in the car I learned in, mom’s 67 Dart with slant six and 3 speed auto on the column. We pulled up to the test site, middle of small village I grew up in, test was in live traffic. Mom and I get out, greet tester, then he takes me for check of car. As we are about to get in and start my dad pulls up in his patrol car, gets out in full county police uniform and walks right up to the tester and addresses him. You can be forgiven at this point in the story if you think skids are about to be greased – you never met my dad – Suffolk County Police Sergeant, former Navy MP and NYC Gold Gloves runner up. Fixes the guy with the Look and states, “Perfect score, one point off and he fails and has to retest.” So, with that off we went. I passed, even by my dad’s standard. After all, he taught me. Addendum: later that Fall he got me ready for my first winter driving by taking me to county emergency driving facility and let me rip it up on the skid plate, then taught me to drive a stick on a yellow school bus he borrowed from a buddy. Still miss him…
Got 100 on the written, and 95 on the driving. I was so pissed.
Had to make a right hand turn that was more than a standard 90 degree, in my Mom’s Minivan. Got marked for taking the turn too wide. However, I had no choice, because if I didn’t, I would have kissed the curb with the back wheel, and that would have been an automatic failure.
17 year old me, felt like it was a no win scenario, and I was totally cheated out of a perfect score.
Mine was super easy. My father started having me drive when I was 12 so by the time “driving school” came around at the High School it was easy. I was more annoyed that it to 6 weeks of summer vacation.
Can’t miss an opportunity to give my brother a hard time, haha. I passed no problem but he apparently got so lost the first time he failed!
I failed the test twice.
First time I failed, it was because I had to make a left turn and was in the intersection, except that I noticed some pedestrians begun crossing the street and I wanted to let them get to the curb first. The light changed while I was waiting, and the tester took over the wheel to make the turn when the pedestrians barely cleared the lane we were turning into. I personally think that was a bullshit fail, given that I think a headline reading “DMV practical driving portion ends with two in hospital” is worse.
I have genuinely forgotten why I failed the second time, but I do remember the day I finally passed. I had gone through the whole course smoothly and was returning back to the DMV parking lot, crawling at less than 5 mph with my foot hovering over the brake in case a pedestrian crossed into my path, when the tester pressed their own brakes. I immediately panicked because, well, tester intervention is an automatic fail, right? So I’m shitting bricks as I’m turning into the endpoint, and then the tester turns to me and goes “So I only pressed on my brakes to remind you about pedestrians in the parking lot, I knew you were paying attention and that you had your foot over the brake and that you were prepared to stop, you passed, congratulations.” The relief I felt hearing that, goddamn.
I should have failed mine! I took it in my instructor’s Chevy Cruze, in the snow, and backed into the curb doing the 3-point turn. Instructor didn’t notice!
Mine was a two-parter because the Ontario Ministry of Transport only sent tester our way for a couple of days per month.
The first time I went, the sticky right turn signal on our 79 LTD wagon (fixed by doing a Fonzie on the sheet metal beside it) uh…stuck. he told me to turn around and come back the next day with a working car that we could safely use for the test. I complained and he offered to have me come back the next month. Complaining stopped instantly.
So, the next day, I showed up in our other car, a 1972 Ford Ranch Wagon police package (known as “The Hearse” and “The Raunch Wagon”) that was probably about as safe as downed power lines in the rain. I aced everything, but had never once parallel parked in that car. So naturally the (different) guy asks me to parallel park behind a Taurus so new that it still had the temporary license sticker on the front window, and no plates.
I pulled up beside the gleaming Taurus. Checked in all directions, and decided to send it.
Perfect.
He called us done right then. I got that coveted license, and drove home feeling like a million bucks in a car that was worth $100.
Neighborhood traffic “calming” circles were a new thing for us and our instructor said “if nobody’s at the intersection, you can cut through to the left rather than go the long way around to the right.”
The examiner disagreed and failed me for driving on the wrong side of the road.
Aced the follow-up.
Both tests were conducted with my left foot since I’d broken my right leg and wore a cast for all of my lessons.
1974 Volvo 140 wagon (white). Automatic, it goes without saying.
First try in my dad’s late 80’s Sedan de Vile. In Ohio you have to do the 5 cone challenge to prove you can navigate tight situations. I hit 4 of the 5 cones and the tester made a joke. I thought he was serious so I quickly hit the 5th cone. He couldn’t stop laughing… until he failed me.
Second try in my mom’s late 80’s Cutlas. Navigated the cones with ease and got my license.
I passed the first time. My mother’s Chevy Sprint didn’t run that great and actually stalled during the test. I popped it in neutral and started it back up. The tester either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
The tester probably thought you did a great job of dealing with the situation.
Passed in Mom’s new 1965 Mercury Colony Park wagon with the fake wood panels and the extra 2 seats in the back. I have no idea what was under the hood, but that thing hit 60mph so fast you hardly had time to take a deep breath. Perfect car for buck night at the drive-in. Good times.
January 1990. Mom’s ’86 Plymouth Horizon. Got dinged for parallel parking too far out from the curb but passed.
It was so long ago, I don’t remember much. I remember more from my more recent but still a while ago motorcycle licensing exam though, that the setup was much crueler if you got your license via the MSF route rather than the DMV – if you failed, you did so in front of the entire class.
They called you up to pick up your temp license, and I remember thinking how terrible it must feel to watch if you didn’t make it. Hope it’s better now.
Took my driving test in February of 1989 during a heavy snowstorm. I was driving our ’73 Duster with the 225 slant-six and an automatic. The instructor informed me at the beginning that he wasn’t going to go easy on me just because it was snowing.
I took the test, Y-turn, parallel parking and all, and passed it the first try in the snow. His only complaint was that I needed to use more exaggerated motions to show when I was looking over my shoulder.
On the drive home, I put the car in the neighbor’s front yard and pushed her flower boxes up by her house as I was trying to turn into our driveway while coming down a snowy hill.
First lesson learned. 🙂
My folks had just traded in their ’67 Mercedes 220 sedan for a ’69 240 (I think). The seat belt did not have a regular clicker style seat belt. It had a kind of hook-like way of attaching the belts together. I had to show the tester person how to connect the seat belt, so I imagined I gained some points for that. I passed easily for mom was a great trainer.
It went fine, but I failed. The lady told me “turn here” so I did, and it was a one way exit from the DMV, so I failed doing what she friggin told me to do. 1990 Accord 5 spd manual.
Our local Dmv will do that to see if you are paying attention to your surroundings
Took the test in a mid 90s Ford Escort (this was 2000). I was 18; my parents felt at 16 I wasn’t mature enough to drive (or more likely, they couldn’t have afforded a car for me then anyway and probably didn’t want me to bother with a restricted license; they’ve never told me and I never asked). I technically ran a red light but still passed anyway, largely because my instructor was actually one of the phys ed coaches who did driving instruction on the side for a kickback from the state DOT, not one of those power tripping state instructors that intentionally tries to fail kids.
A funny side story: I intentionally tried to skip one of the lessons because I didn’t feel like doing it. Thought I could get away with telling both him and my parents I had forgotten about it, but he just drove to my house and picked me up. Neither party was very happy with me. In those days I still thought I could just not do things I didn’t want to do and just make up an excuse that everyone would accept. Ah youth…
I practiced parallel parking until I could do it with my eyes closed. Never once hit a cone. Until I took my driver’s test. Because of that I ended up one point from failing. I think. It was a looooong time ago.
took it not too long ago, I failed due to “a dangerous turn”.
I was in a 10th gen Civic belonging to my driving instructor.
I don’t remember much about either event except that I passed.
All I remember is mine was in an early 1990s Corolla.
I killed a squirrel within the first 200-300 feet… When it darted to the left side of the lane I got close to the curb, then it ran to the middle and stopped so I also centered myself in the lane so it had an equal shot either way or I’d pass over it. It instead chose to dart towards the left tire again. The rest of the test went perfect, and perfectly awkward. I did get a kudos at the end for keeping my cool and not panicking during and after that first bit.
As a December Birth, I was the last in my class to get a drivers license. Massachusetts changed it’s Learners Permit policy, from a 10 question written test, to having a pulse. That meant that the Driver’s Test would be a verbal test from the 100 or so questions in the DMV guide. All my friends would tell me all the stupid questions they got wrong, which I knew. so I did not study.
In Massachusetts you needed to go to the DMV to get an appointment, like 8-9 weeks out. So when I went to do the verbal test, the examiner asked me 5 questions, I had no idea what the answers were, (though 44 years later I still remember what they were)
Rescheduled the test for 9 week later, and I knew that book COLD, the examiner asked me the same 5 questions, and told me “oh you studied this time!”
The Driving test was a piece of cake.
To Date this, I took it in a used 1972 Dodge Dart.
Mine was in a 1962 Dodge Dart station wagon. Three on the tree. I passed first time.