Be Excellent To Each Other

[Zio took]40 lessons [to learn to drive]? [His] instructor needs to take a long hard look at his methods.

Judge not, lest ye be judged.

Indeed - I've known people that needed twice as many.

I was 28 when I learned to drive. I was very, very nervous about it to begin with.

That said, I did pass the test first time, so maybe I didn't need that many lessons.

I got most of my lessons from my father. Much cheaper. No point paying someone else to do something any decent driver can do. I only got lessons near the test for lessons specifically on how to pass the test.

I offered a similar service to a friend. Although somewhat reversed.

Instructor-feex.

As does your English teacher.

you're face is an engerlish teecher.

Well that's not true at all. Being able to drive and being able to teach someone else to drive aren't (necessarily) the same thing at all.

I had a few lessons with my dad, and every time it ended up in a silent drive home and both of us storming into the house and going to different rooms

Those that can, do. Those that can't, teach. Those that can't teach, train teachers.

I couldn't teach someone to drive, I'm a horrific passenger even when I'm with someone who already can drive.

Despite the fact that I broke the clutch, then on a separate occasion managed to write the whole car off with my Dad in it, we never had any arguments with me behind the wheel.

Which is weird, because we argue about everything else.

Yet in my case, one of the massive arguments came about because I couldn't reverse around a corner and stay close to the kerb
We never argue about anything usually.

My wife is learning to drive.

We went out in my car.

Once.

Too much gold in here to be hidden in the member area. Can a kindly mod please split out the learning to drive talk?

Fucking hell, I can't even drive a car with my dad as a passenger now without a fight breaking out!

I remember one time whilst I was doing lessons, he needed to go to the next town and let me drive as practice. We started with the car parked on the right-hand side of the road, so I needed to check traffic heading both ways to be able to pull out and get onto the correct side of the road. Dad decided to he'd tell me when the right moment to go was, rather than rely on my own mirror-checking skills.

Cue about 15 minutes of him going "wait.... right... go now!... NO! WAIT! Hold on... in a min... right, go now... no, too late... wait... now... no wait... right, go... no stop wait... right..."

before I turned off the engine, shouted at him that he could fucking drive and got out of the car.

My Dad taught my brother to drive. On more than one occasion, my brother had to fend for himself after my Dad fell asleep in the passenger seat, well-lubricated as he was by a few pints earlier in the evening.

On one occasion, he ended up on the M54 by mistake while Dad was asleep. When Dad woke up, his advice was simply "Put your clog on, make it look like you know what you're doing."

I didn't ask my Dad to teach me to drive.

About sixteen lessons, four (count 'em) tests.

I passed the forth one with only one minor fault

Oh, for me, it was a one-week intensive driving course (35 hours of lessons in a single week) followed by the test.

Failed with 1 dangerous fault, 2 serious faults and 16 minor faults.

Gave up for a few years, then in 2004 did another 5-6 lessons as a refresher, a load of private practice, and then passed the second test with 3 minors.

I had about a years worth of lessons (1 a week barring holidays), BUT I had to wait over 3 months for a test as there was a massive backlog due to the theory test being introduced. I did the theory test on the first week it was introduced!

Passed first time. My instructor told me afterwards that he'd had very few failures in all the years he'd been doing it as he'd never put anyone through until he was 100% convinced they'd pass.

FTFY. One a week for a year?! Holy crap.

I had about 20 lessons.

1st test I failed due to stopping in front of an opening to a forecourt while I was in traffic, and blocking someone on the opposite side of the road who wanted to turn in. That was a bit annoying.
2nd test I failed as I had chickenpox at the time
3rd passed no problem.

On my one and only test, right near the end, I was coming up to a roundabout. I slowed down, checked for traffic, then went to go straight across the roundabout. As I did this, a car flew on to the roundabout from my left and I had to emergency stop to avoid hitting it. I just hadn't seen the bloody car.

After he passed, I put the car back into gear and carried on, extremely deflated because I knew that I'd blown it and failed my test.

When we got back to the centre, the examiner told me I'd passed the test and I actually stopped him and asked him if he was sure! He laughed and said "you must've thought you'd failed at that roundabout". Apparently I totally did make a mistake by not seeing the other car, but he thought I'd dealt with it really well and could only give me a minor for it.

So he's who you've got to thank for me being allowed out on the roads.

Think of it like this, if I had failed the waiting list was such it probably would have taken another couple of months to get a retest.

+ I was ready to take the test in May but it took until August to get a test. So I carried on the lessons so I didn't get rusty.

I failed my first test because the examiner distracted me by talking non stop about cool bands he'd seen.

Well, the other car was in the wrong on that one - if you were already on the roundabout when he came flying on, then he should have stopped.

One of mine kept opening and shutting the sunroof

Was it Myp?

Passed my test first time in May 2006 after 7 lessons. The only mistake I made was to crunch third gear crossing a junction. My test lasted exactly 17 minutes. Funny the things you remember

You'll forgive me for this, but you must have been older than the average student.

Took mine after about 5 or 6 lessons when I was 17, no minor faults
The examiner said nobody had ever double-declutched in a test before, but then, Pitlochry's sole driving instructor's Fiesta had a bit of a worn out gearbox.

So presumptuous!

I had seven lessons, failed (part my fault, part the fault of a curb that leaped out in front of me...), had three more, then passed. I've only written off one car since then

In an accident, I mean. I've driven two others to their grave.

If we're comparing: 20 lessons. 1 Failed test (stupid taxi driving down the wrong side of the road) and 1 passed with 2 minors.

January 2006.

Four months of two lessons a week, failed (three majors!)
1 month off.
Two refresher lessons, passed.

My 17th birthday was in April and I had my licence by September. I got my first car the next May, but I now can't remember why I didn't get one sooner.

A friend of mine failed his first test because the examiner told him to go down a narrow street with lots of parked cars on it, meaning it'd be a bit of a tight squeeze in places to get past. He knew that mounting the curb would result in failure, so he instead just destroyed his wing mirror and one of the parked cars wing mirrors in order to squeeze past.

Yeah, apparently that results in failure too. He felt very hard done by from the whole experience.

No shit!

When presented with two possible fail methods, it would have probably been best to pick the least worst one (ie not the one which caused physical damage).

I almost became a driving instructor, cool story fans!

There's a test? Is this a new thing?

Ha, my fuck up, that should have been 1986

This is pretty much what DBSnappa's driving test looked like, give or take a couple of years:

Was it your narcolepsy that foiled the plan?

(yes, that's the second "lol myp can't stop sleeping" joke I've made today, sue me )

I think 2am is a pretty reasonable time to fall asleep.

Another friend of mine actually is a driving instructor. He's had what ex-US president Bill Clinton might refer to as 'sexual relations' with two of his female pupils too, like he's in some kind of shit 70's British sex comedy.

Who does he work for? BDSM?

Ladies and gentleman, you can all now pack up now as that was POTW!