In the middle of looking for my current diary today (temporarily lost in the furniture moves around the house), I came across a diary from 2009. Which is the year I learned to drive. It was also strange timing because I had taken Ben out for a driving lesson this morning too.
But what freaked me out the most was the fact that it turns out I only had ten lessons before I took my test. Woah. Ten hours of driving experience. Due to family and friends either not being local to me or not available at the same time as me, I learned to drive pretty much only from lessons! I was probably taken out for driving practice three or four times outside of lessons, and that wasn’t to learn anything specific, it was just to drive around in general and try a different car.
Come to think of it, technically the hour before the test is a lesson too. They do this to calm you down and get you warmed up. So I guess I had eleven lessons then.
I passed first time. Woo hoo! Though I had no idea if I had passed. My instructor had prepped me really well on how the tests worked, and I knew that if you made a major mistake, they didn’t tell you, but instead got you to drive straight back to the testing centre. Towards the end of my test, I forgot to indicate as I pulled out somewhere. And we went straight back to the testing centre!
When we pulled into the carpark and had parked, the assessor asked me how I thought I had done. I must have looked utterly panicked, because he quickly said “Oh, you’ve passed, it’s ok!” Before we got out the car, we went through the mistakes I had made so I could learn from them. They were all pretty minor, though in one area if I had gotten one more minor thing wrong I had to be failed. Close call.
Then my driving instructor came over and found out I had passed, so he was happy! And then he radioed back to base that I had passed to. I was lucky to have found a great driving school off the bat. And I think my instructor was one of the owners of the school too, so he really cared how his students did.
How did you learn to drive? Do you have any tips on teaching someone how to drive?
Awesome! I love finding things like this! Brings back so many memories. Congrats on passing the first time.
I think I learned in an empty parking lot late at night. I was prob 18 and practiced twice before taking the test. Pretty gutsy. I did pass though 🙂
I think I had it pretty easy on my test – I think one of my three “maneuvers” was changing gear haha. Apparently that’s classed as a maneuver in an auto car test.
Oh gosh…now this is a while ago. I got my license in 1999 in my last year of high school. I got it on my 3rd go, bad I know. The first one I didn’t see the 40 sign and kept driving at 60kph and the second one…well I honestly can’t remember. I can remember being so very nervous on both occasions so that didn’t help. I had a little Corolla that used to be my Mums but they kept it for me to drive. I used to work Saturday mornings and so my Dad would come and pick me up in my car and I’d drive home. My parents would also take me into the back streets of an industrial estate on the weekends and I’d drive around there. My tip would be to have someone that is very calm when teaching. My Mum was NOT calm and really stressed me out when I was trying to learn, she made me get out of the car once and drove off because she was frustrated with me and I was frustrated at her….she ended up coming back to get me :).
My instructor told me one of their ‘tricks’ at the local testing centre is that the exit has a stop sign & line. Apparently lots of people fail before they make it out of the car park because they treat it as a give way instead.
I try to be patient (which isn’t my strong suit) but I think I go too far towards under-teaching.