An ultimatum: “Once you start your junior year, I am not driving you to school.”
By the time the summer after my 10th grade year rolled around, my mother was nearing her wits’ end. In one short summer, her endless patience in driving me back and forth for nearly seventeen years had turned into a burning desire to never drive me anywhere again.
The fact was that I would have to get my driver’s license, and soon.
In theory, passing a driving test shouldn’t be that hard. The catch is that I don’t have the greatest track record when it comes to driving. My first time behind the wheel, I jolted over a speed bump at twenty miles per hour and screamed bloody murder. I once stopped in the middle of an intersection on Aloma because I thought that when I saw a red light, I had to stop, no matter where I was. After I nearly turned right into an oncoming van, my first driving instructor told my parents that I was too absent-minded and irresponsible to drive, leading to my being banned from the driver’s seat for more than two months.
After having my permit for more than a year, I’ve thankfully become a more cautious and alert driver. However, I wouldn’t call myself an expert (speed bumps still freak me out). In all certainty, I wasn’t sure if I should be getting my license.
Still, the ultimatum stood, and it was the week before my junior year and I couldn’t drive. I crossed my fingers and signed up for a test the coming Thursday.
Needless to say, I didn’t pass.
Below is a step-by-step list of how to fail a driving exam, successfully tested by yours truly. (If you actually want to pass your test, make sure you don’t do any of this).
- Forget how to adjust your mirrors. By the time I remembered how to get mirrors situated, we’d been sitting in the car for nearly five full minutes.
- Take a really long time adjusting your seat. Nobody wants to wait around in a car watching you move your seat back and forth, up and down, especially when the car has been sitting in a parking lot without air conditioning for an hour.
- Forget what an emergency brake is. When I tried to back out of the parking lot at the beginning of the test, the car wouldn’t move. I turned the car on and off, shifted gears back and forth several times, and it still wouldn’t budge. Turns out the examiner had put the emergency brake on before I’d gotten in the car, and the car wouldn’t move unless I released it. I thought emergency brakes were used only when parking on hills, but I guess I was wrong.
- Hit the curb during your three-point turn. Before I started the turn, I was told specifically not to hit the curb. Enough said.
- Drive through a stop sign. “That sign that you just blew by? It was a big, red sign that said S-T-O-P on it. That means STOP. You just drove by it at 18 miles per hour.”
Little did I know, I was far from alone. Close to 50 percent of people fail their driving test the first time they take it.
Junior Kendra Eichelberger even failed for the exact same reason as I did.
“It was the stop sign that got me,” she said.
Once you fail your test once, you start to learn about all kinds of outlandish driving exam stories. One of my best friends said she’d been postponing taking her test, but in actuality she’d failed twice before she passed. I’ve heard about people backing into poles and stopping less than five feet away from a fence on their quick stop.
Failing a driving test–it’s a bit like joining an exclusive club.
The silver lining is that if you fail once, you can take the test again, and there’s nothing stopping you from passing this time. I take my test again later this week–wish me luck!
