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
By the time I was 16 I already had years of driving experience. Took my road test in a Dodge Colt with a manual transmission, which made me legendary among my non-manual driving peers. Piece of cake.
It was one of the happiest days of my life. September of 2006. I took it in my ma’s Trailblazer EXT because both my dad’s truck and mine had straight pipes and we were worried the DMV guy wouldn’t like that.
Got out on the road with the guy riding shotgun and followed his directions for not even five minutes. He then looks at me and says ‘You’ve been driving stuff your whole life haven’t you?’ Well considering all the tractors and go-karts and dirtbikes and snowmobiles I said ‘Yes sir I have.’
He then says ‘Go back’ and nothing else so I’m terrified I did something wrong but I pull in and safely park and he says ‘Yup you passed.’
I’ll never forget that day!
1996, driving an ’88 Dodge Caravan SWB V6. Because my mom was too timid to have the Safe Sex conversation, she decided to use a Social Prophylactic on me.
I was a pretty great driver for my age, TBH, but I still almost failed because the instructor thought I pulled out into traffic too aggressively and without enough gap.
I dug myself into more of a hole by lecturing her that the A/C was off and the car was in good repair and had an A/T, so the odds of a stall were very slim compared to the car I had waiting at home (Golf 5MT). That was considered defensive/combative, even though in my 16yo brain it was perfectly logical.
She let it slide. I’m 47 and have never hit another car OR been hit myself. And I don’t exactly drive defensively all the time…
73 VW beetle was the ride of choice. Test person was cool and things went mostly ok. I thought I 100% crushed it driving like a little old lady. Got done and the test person gave me a 70 (70 was minimum score to pass) because I was “shifting too early”. I was shifting too early because YOU were in the car dude, otherwise i would have wound out a few more revs on the uphill and left turns.
Anyways, got my DL and hopped back into the same car i drive to the DMV in with my buddy as the “licensed” driver (he passed his test the day before) and the rest is history.
We celebrated by going to Malibu Gran Prix arcade and played video games and drove go karts dressed like F1 cars the rest of the day.
Back in the day, Texas passed a law that you did NOT have to take the driver’s test if you had your leaner’s permit for a year. This law went into effect on June 1st. I turned 16 on June 3rd…and had no idea. I was so confused when, after passing the written test, they just gave me a license. Um…ma’am…aren’t you forgetting something?
Although it did explain why my friend, who had turned 16 in March, waited until June 1st to get his license.
I’m waiting for Nic Periton’s driving test. Road locomotive, or 1930 Bentley 8 Litre?
Probably a steam conveyance of some sort.
I took my test in a perfectly normal Frazer Nash Le Mans replica, the road engine license was, (and is) an agricultural machine license any 14 yearold can apply. Four young people have taken their test in the Bentley, they all passed first time. I did not take my test in the Bentley beccause at the age of 17 it was not mine.I think the reasoning being, if you can drive this thing in modern traffic without dieing or killing anyone then you are good to go!
Was that a chain gang car?
The only transmission that makes you think “I could build that”
It was and still is, It was my mothers car, many many years later I found it by chance and fixed it. Joyce drove it hard on her birthday, really what else can one give someone as a pressie.
The transmission is so clever, it is almost a teaching device, if a does b then what is c required to do.
Those things always reminded me of home made farm machinery. Of course I grew up on a farm owned by a CalTech graduate, and we had a drill press that could drill a 3 inch hole through an anvil.
Not only that, but that transmission is a very early example of a constant mesh multiple clutch transmission for a certain definition of the word clutch.
Think bicycle derailleur, it is system that helps balance input energy to speed,and torque. It is a dog box ( I like to think that comes from the barking noise that can happen) but no, it is the dogs that get out to engauge the bits.
The dogs are what I was referring to as a certain definition of the word clutch.
Of the ten trillion folk who chat on this website, two of us know of what we speak, at least we are the only ones who admit it.
I look foward to a rebuttal from a real engineer. The big road engine has either infinite gearing or two speeds, maybe three, and it goes backkwards sometimes quite quickly!
I was extremely confident in my ability to ace the test driving my mother’s Honda Pilot… but we got rear-ended at a dead stop by somebody doing ~40mph in that car just days before my test. Luckily I wasn’t behind the wheel for that, but it still had an effect on my confidence. Having just been in a relatively intense accident, I was told over and over that I didn’t need to take the driving test yet if I wasn’t comfortable.
Thing is, I was dead set on getting my license 6 months + 1 day from when I turned sixteen. Not sure how other states differ, or New York State changed their laws at all, but at the time you could get your permit at sixteen years of age and weren’t eligible for your license until you’ve had that for six months. The +1 extra day was due to the six month mark being on a Sunday.
So my stepsister was kind enough to let me borrow her Nissan Rogue – thank goodness, because I didn’t really want to do it my father’s lifted F-250. I ended up with a near perfect score – with just a minor points deduction. I was called out for having “clipped the double yellow line” on a left turn, since I didn’t swing it wide enough. I was content with that, and went home a licensed driver at 16 years, 6 months, and one day old.
It always shocks me when people used to say it took them multiple attempts… I had to take a 5hr classroom course as part of the process, and people there were recalling the number of times they attempted their road test. There was a young woman there who had be trying to pass for over a year. Her next attempt was to be her 8th – It’s scary to think we share the road with some of these people.
Written exam: easy
Road Test: I was doing it in my Dad’s 67 MGB (top down). The instructor told me where to go, and I already knew the area so it was pretty easy. The whole time driving, the instructor was asking me questions about the car. About 30mins in, the instructor told me I passed and asked if we could keep driving LOL.
I drove him around for another 30mins
My son passed the exam easily
Road test: A parking lot with 3 turn and parallel parking spot. The instructor wasn’t even in the car. Course took 2-3mins and he passed.
My test went well, I took it after taking a summer driver’s ed course my high school offered. Our car was an 80-ish Ford Granada sedan. Driving that felt like I coudl drive anything.
Pretty easy. We drove around the block (almost literally) and came back for the part to pull thru some cones, then back out. He even warned me I was getting close on one side. By then it was raining so we pulled up to the front of the BMV, he gave me paperwork and said good job.
I saw my grandpa waiting and said “hi grandpa, let’s go”. Drove to the BMV. (1983 I think in his little Chevette.)
Mine was set up for an F250 to pass and I was in a Focus so it was comically easy (still not great at parallel parking but it’s relatively easy to avoid it here).
Got it on the second try. The first time I took, the test was in a 1965 Mercedes-Benz 190 diesel. A whopping 40 horsepower and a four speed column shift. One of those speedometers that is a vertical cylinder that changes color and pattern at different speeds. Anyway aside from the general weirdness and lots of shifting and diesel clatter ranging from very slow to still slow, the test guy failed me for lugging the engine and shifting too much.
So the next week I came back in a clapped out 10-year-old Maserati 3500 convertible. It would go 60 miles an hour in first or reverse, had a five speed, and a metric speedometer. Oh, and the Italian equivalent of cherry bomb mufflers. I just left it in first including the merge on the freeway part. The test guy was visibly put off by the whole thing.
I suppose I could have come in with our Studebaker Deuce-and-a-Half US6 2.5-ton 6×6 truck. Stalin liked them, why not the DMV?
The DMV guy was probably wondering what I would bring in next, and I passed.
Love it! My test wasn’t until the mid-90s, and at that point my parents said “Just take the automatic, we don’t need them docking you points over manual transmission habits” and that was pretty good advice. They probably would not have like my high-revving technique in my normal car.
I did my test in San Diego in 1983. Many subdivisions in SoCal have what are described as “uncontrolled intersections” or intersections without stop signs. There are almost always in these intersections that one of the streets have water drain dips that pretty much make you down but the speed limit through them is 15 mph or at least where I was in Clairemont.
Well, I “blew” through one at about 30 and oh-oh instant fail.
Came back a week later and aced it.
A day later did my motorcycle riding test.
Aced that. Of course, I’d been riding since I was little.
Fun times.
It was 1985 so I just went to the dedicated testing location (no on live traffic) made a few turns and with signals parallel parked and was done.
In 1993 in a different state I was taking the motorcycle test and my foot brushed the ground during the cone swerving after the 5 ft 90 deg. corner and I was sent home without finishing. I went home practiced it and passed the second time.
I was fortunate to have an excellent behind-the-wheel instructor back when the gym teachers did that job in the summers. Was taught defensive driving from the get-go in a Ford Tempo. Also my father was a mailman so he had to be a defensive driver and served as a decent role model even if he never took me out for practice driving.
I was determined to get my license so I also spent a lot of time practicing parallel parking before the test in my mother’s Light Green 1978 Buick LeSabre coupe. Despite it being a malaise barge and there being no passenger side mirror, I aced the test!
The gym teachers that have been pushed out of gym teaching because of incompetence were relegated to drivers ed in high school. They as a group were pretty uniformly sadistic creeps. In the middle of the semester my father got elected to the school board. Suddenly they were really nice to me.
My experience in Germany (as a Brazilian driver):
I don’t remember going through such an agonizing and humiliating process in the last 20 years. I felt like an idiot for failing something that was basic to me. I apologize to those who defend the German process, but I think it’s the most ridiculous thing in the world. First, because for 6 months I drove normally here in Germany, and after 6 months, according to German logic, I no longer know how to drive and I’m a danger on the roads. Almost all neighboring countries don’t require this process, and yet you don’t hear about Brazilians killing people and having accidents on the road. Ridiculous. Anyway, that’s my opinion.
I started the process around November, if I’m not mistaken.
Theoretical test: I got angry several times and thought about giving up because at the beginning I really couldn’t remember the answers. I’ve always had trouble memorizing things, and it wasn’t different in school. As I studied for hours a day, with dedication, things improved until you realize you start passing the practice tests frequently. In January or February, I don’t remember exactly, I took the test and passed with 2 small mistakes.
Practical:
Berlin, My first instructor was simply awful (Frank). The day he yelled at me for the first time in my first lesson, I should have gotten out of the car and said, “Thank you for your incompetence.” But no, I thought, “I’ll ignore the grumpy, cowardly German and pass.” He practically gave basic commands and didn’t train me enough. I realized this immediately when I changed instructors.
1st test: I didn’t stop at the stop sign for 3 seconds. Here I’ll blame the instructor who NEVER stopped at a STOP sign with me, because I would have made that mistake and remembered that serious error.
2nd test: My mistake. Pure nervousness made me not change lanes when the lane narrowed and I should have gone to the left.
After that time, already totally upset, I went to the driving school and spoke to the owner, who is also an instructor, and said that I wanted a better instructor and someone with more patience.
The one I had before couldn’t really be called an instructor. That’s why I say I passed on Monday and not Wednesday because what I had before shouldn’t even have counted as a class.
With the new teacher it was better, but again, typical German WITHOUT ANY teaching skills. There’s not a word of support, no harmonious way of speaking and treating the student. Just as grumpy. At least he talked a lot about the important points. I always wrote down in my notebook afterwards points that I need to pay more attention to and/or that I missed in class.
3rd test: I was very confident, calm, but of course always with that standard nervousness too. I did 30 minutes of the test and when I got to the Dekra I thought I was going to pass, but he said that I didn’t look properly at the Schulterblick when returning the car to the lane, and also pointed out several other things like not observing properly at the R4Links, driving slowly, etc. Honestly, I don’t remember making any of those mistakes. That’s why I was kind of shocked. He was a Ukrainian guy, one of those who must have just graduated and wanted to show off, plus my instructor said that the driving instructors who used to be Teachers are usually a little nicer because they know how nervous the student is. That’s when I posted my disappointment here. It was even the trigger for me to start the therapy I had been putting off, lol.
From that moment on, I thought about giving up and taking the test in the Czech Republic and paying the 5,000 euros to get the license (from scratch, not a driver licensechange process). It would be tense, laborious for a reason, but I don’t know, I strongly considered it. At that moment I also started taking the car I bought 2 months ago and going to the Dekra and doing simulations. I did the simulations with an app called myroute. This app (paid after 30 days, but cheap) records the route and I used it when I took the third test. I think I did this about 6 or 7 times (driving without a license). I knew the risks of driving without a license and the consequences, but I said fuck it, there are hardly any police checkpoints here, and if they catch me, that’s it, goodbye Germany. I don’t recommend doing this because of the consequences, but in reality, it helped me a lot. As you can imagine, I was already quite pissed off/disappointed/demotivated/anxious.
4th test: I felt confident, but of course, after failing 3 times your confidence isn’t 100% either. In the last test I was also confident. I took the test trying to stay calm, but I felt my heart pounding faster. Except for the autobahn, it had absolutely everything. There was an right before left rule that I thought he was going to fail me on, but even looking closely, I passed, and out of nowhere a car came at full speed. At that moment I got tense. But as I saw on YouTube, don’t dwell on the mistakes you made during the test. Finishing the test (about 35 minutes or so) he says I passed, and of course, an absurd relief. I already had my speech prepared in my head in case he decided to fail me on right before left rule, haha. I asked if there was anything I needed to improve and he said I did perfectly.
Never again.
My parents paid for driving school, including a couple of driving sessions with an instructor. Said instructor did very little to instruct me on actual driving, and instead took me around the driving test course so I knew what I’d have to do in advance. “Here’s where you’ll do the three point turn.” “Make sure to stop at the the stop sign here, then you can pull forward to actually see the intersection.” Things like that.
One lesson was during tests, so instead of real instruction, he took me to a nearby neighborhood where he had “replicated” the test course. I had no idea what he was talking about and just drove where he told me to.
I took the test in the instructors car with him watching. I only lost a couple of points for parallel parking, which my instructor was mad about as he watched and thought I did it perfectly.
I was an accomplished driver in Istanbul traffic when I arrived in NYC for graduate school. That traffic is not for the faint of heart, let me tell you.
And yet I failed my driving test THREE times, first time in Staten Island (car had nearly no brakes; friend failed to mention until I discovered it myself; failed for “slowing down” at an intersection with no STOP sign for me).
Second time I think failed because forgot to put it in R at a three-point turn for a split second. I caught it super quick, but the instructor got so scared, I had to actually calm them down. I said I know you just failed me but chill, I’m actually an experienced driver. He apologized for failing me.
Don’t even remember the third fail.
I believe I’m capable of failing it again. They want you to behave in such a specific manner. If you don’t demonstratively “look back” before changing lanes…. that’s a fail. In truth, I teach people not to do that. My theory is to not duplicate sensory inputs. Mirror plus “over the shoulder” – since the mirror doesn’t cover that – but don’t LOOK BACK where the mirror can. That confuses my brain. Same now…. new car has a back up camera. Parallel parking has become a nightmare as my brain doesn’t know who to trust, but tries to include both sensory inputs into the decision making. Seriously…. I suck at parallel parking all of a sudden. (but also because the CX-50 has hips and I don’t know where the sidewalk is yet).
In Brooklyn traffic, looking back guarantees that all the cars in front of you will have changed lanes by the time you return your attention to what’s going on in the forward direction. Nobody in front of you is checking what’s going on behind them.
WORD
The written test to get a learner’s permit in NYS was stupid easy. I distinctly remember a multiple choice question regarding what the purpose of long highway onramps is (for merging traffic to get up to highway speed) where one of the answers was “to test your car’s ‘pickup.'” So I was in no danger of failing that one.
I did fail my road test once. I swear the instructor waited until a line of cars were behind me to ask me to do a 3-point turn. Which I did, poorly, and she told me I should have waited until traffic had eased. I also made a right hand turn into the parking lane of a busy street which apparently was considered “dangerous” so I failed. I do not even remember the second road test except that I passed.
Why does my member picture look like a penis? I didn’t order that!
It’s just that, a member picture.
My tester told me he could flunk me for going too slow. A short time later he said he could also flunk me for going too fast.
I did the test in my mom’s ’99 Pathfinder, with a big dealer installed brush bar on the front. The examiner was incredibly attractive and smelled like strawberries. I backed up on to the curb during the parallel park, which she never mentioned. The only comment was “check your blind spots more, here’s your license”.
In Ontario, since the 90s, we have a graduated license system. So a year later I went back for my final road test. I remember nothing from it other than the comment was once again “check your blind spots more, here’s your license”.
It’s been 20 years since that last test, and I myself now hold signing authority for commercial licenses. I still forget to check my blind spot. Blind spot warnings are my favourite nanny tech.
Now, by Dad had a much worse time. He got an instructor that refused to give anyone a perfect score. So they drove around for AN HOUR AND A HALF until he made a mistake. Still passed on the first go, but he was livid.
Took my test in my dads 1973 Buick Electra 225 in two inches of snow 44 years ago. Remember it like it was yesterday. Now get off my lawn.
Test 1: Fail
Test 2: Pass
I did nothing different between them. I asked my friends what the deal was and told them who my administrator was. Some also had her and agreed she apparently would never pass teenagers on their first test.
That was 1991 at the Vacaville, CA DMV.
The test was fine. It was the drivers-ed that was the problem.
Why?
Because all the cars in our family had been stick shifts for as long as I could remember. I had learned by watching my patents drive, then by driving only those stick shifts myself. I was pretty good at it too with very smooth starts and shifts. No grinding, no drama.
So when I sat in the drivers ed car and found an automatic with only two pedals and a column shift I had no idea WHAT to do! The (WAY over assisted) power brakes and power steering were new experiences too. So I over compensated for everything. It was a very jerky first drive. My instructor was not impressed.
I know the joke is how a stick shift is the best modern anti theft device but I’m telling you, there was a time and a place an automatic was just as baffling. I know because I was there.
I’ve only ever driven a few automatics and I find it genuinely tricky. The first time I ever drove one for any length of time, it took me five minutes to stop my left foot from instinctively going for the clutch, because I kept pressing the brake instead.
Of course, being in the UK I had to take my test in a manual car, in order to get a full driving license. Otherwise you can only get an automatic-only license, which back then would have seriously limited what cars I could drive. Automatic gearboxes were fairly rare in 90’s Britain, and usually an expensive option.
It’s outright dangerous when the parking brake is a third pedal on an automatic. I recall a few times putting it to the floor as I approached a stop – much to my surprise (and to the guy behind me).
I learned to drive on the family Civic which was manual but my mom signed me up for driving lessons from the guy down the street, who taught driving for a living, so I could use their automatic when I took the road test.
The first time I got into the practice car I drove around with my left foot on the brake. I took a while but when he realized that I was driving with two feet he asked me if my parents had manuals and told me to stop it.
Forgetting that you are in a car with an automatic and gracefully coasting to the stoplight, then slamming on the brake and shifting into Park or reverse because you forgot that it was a automatic, and that pedal wasn’t the clutch?
Yeah that never gets old. Always seemed to happen to me when I noticed the highway patrol car right behind me.
What the hell was that?
I couldn’t find the clutch pedal
.This car has an automatic.
I just noticed that now.