Lesson Time!

So, I had called around to a few different driving schools, getting quotes, finding out availabilities. It's not like in the States where, as I recall, you have to have a certain number of hours of classroom and road training for drivers ed before you can get your license. Here lessons seem more optional. But you're sure gonna need them! A driving school set me up with their automatic guy, and learning time began. By this time, I had already booked my road test at one of the few test centers in the area for September 20th. Yet again, time slots were scarce, and this was one of the earliest I could find. Otherwise I was looking at early into October. Yikes! My license turns into a pumpkin by Halloween, that's cutting it close. And another thing about "convenience" here. In the unlikely event that something IS actually "convenient" - you're penalized for it. The driving test normally costs £62. Unless you want to take it at a time that would be convenient for most normal, working people, on nights or weekends. Then the driving test costs £75. Well, "lucky" for me, I couldn't even find a night or weekend test any time soon, so no worries there. My test was scheduled for 3pm, so only having to work until 1pm on a Friday this worked out well, and I wouldn't even have to take time off from work.

My instructor was a nice fellow in a much abused but decent car (using his own personal car for all of his lessons... poor guy...). I was just grateful that it was responsive and functional enough. I rented a car for work once here, some *diesel* thing that sounded like a tractor and made me fear for my life every time I entered a roundabout because it just wouldn't accelerate. I don't get the diesel thing here. So I was afraid of having lessons in similar, but fortunately not. My instructor also convinced me not to take the test on my own, with my own car, but to use his and have him accompany me. I'd heard mixed reviews both ways, but I took his advice, already starting to question myself and if I really wanted to show up for my driving test in my Hello Kitty mobile. (Not that I'm not otherwise immensely proud and thrilled with it!).

So the lessons go, week after week, the price was fair, I didn't mind. I wanted as much help as I could get, starting to get a grasp on just how horrendous this UK driving test is. Reading all sorts of horror stories online. Looking at the statistics. The average passing rate in for the driving test in the UK is somewhere around 45%. Where I tested, it was 34% for females. I could drive. That was a simple fact. But the lessons weren't so much to learn how to drive, but to learn how to pass the test. As part of the test you have to do one of four maneuvers, either parallel park, reverse into a parking space, reverse around a corner, or three point turn. My biggest problem was the parallel parking. Sure, of course I've wiggled my way into many an impossible parking spot in Boston, NYC. Sometimes successful, sometimes with several sad, awkward passes back and forth, but sure, technically I can parallel park. But nope, this is all about the "performance". Master the right choreography. Hit the curb and fail. The instructor asked to see my parallel parking skills, so I showed him. Not particularly elegantly, but I got right behind the car he asked me to park behind. And then he informs me I'm too close to the car. What? I put the car back in the original position and then he leads me through how I "should" park. Reverse... a gradual angle.... straighten... handbrake, put the car in park. (Another thing that fully messed with my head. The parking brake is always the first thing I release when going or the last thing I engage when stopping. But here you're supposed to shift into park or reverse first, look all around, and *then* release the parking brake just before you take off. And when you stop, it's the first thing you engage. Weird.). So the car was positioned in the result of a test-standard successful parallel park. Which was about one car length behind the car in front of me, and no car behind me. Where would I ever use that!?!? That's not "parallel parking"! If I encountered this on the street and needed to park, I would simply pull up straight, behind the car in front of me! I'm spending all this time and anxiety learning this, why? Again, no logic here. But I learned that choreographed routine, complete with mirror checks and all. Learned how to reverse into a parking space - and it would be easier if there were cars on either side, it would give you a better target, but no, you have to reverse down a row of empty parking spaces, perpendicular to your car, and swing cleanly and straightly into one. Why?? What's wrong with driving straight into a parking space!?

And mirrors. Mirrors mirrors mirrors mirrors, it's ALL about the mirrors. That's what everyone had told me, and that's what seems true. You need to be ON your mirrors, OCD with them, checking all the time, as if someone's following you. Before you slow down - check mirror, before you speed up - check mirror, before you go any which way - check your mirror, before you signal - check your mirror. This I had a hard time with. So ok, sorry I just rear ended you/ran into your kid, I was too busy checking my mirror to make sure there were no cars too close and it was safe to brake before I was able to actually brake. After several lessons, I eventually was broken into the habit. Even the instructor, himself, had no good reason why I needed to take the test and Canadians didn't. "We just don't like Americans?", he offered up. (Joking, of course). And even the instructor himself said "Yes, many of these rules are dumb. Yes, many of these things you don't really do and will never use again. But it's just simply what you have to do for the test, I'm afraid.". He also said "Clearly you can drive, you do ok here, you've been driving to work all this time, but it's all about putting on a show for the examiners." Wouldn't it be more logical and fair and accurate if the instructor was simply to assess that you were fit for driving? All this time spent with them, seeing your real, every day, average driving, VS this one 40 minute performance that you have to execute once, impeccably.

My instructor also advised me to switch my test to a different center, closer to my house, where we could practice in the area more easily. As the test drew closer, I would spend some time driving around that area after work from time to time. I even went so far as to purchase test routes online that I could download for my Garmin. Unfortunately they never worked. I contacted the company and finally got a minimally helpful customer service response of telling me to look at the instructions on the Garmin website to perform what I already had, to try to load the routes onto my Garmin. I still drove around the area, and by test time, I figured I was as ready as I was ever going to be. I also felt like it was partly up to luck and the mood of the examiner and if I looked in the mirror 9 instead of 10 times, I could fail.

And my instructor did kind of raise my fears a little by asking me "What happens if you fail? Have you thought about what you will do?", pointing out that my US license was to become invalid awfully soon, and pointing out how close I cut it. I explained to him that I was just following the rules, waiting until 6 months before I got my provisional license here. He asks me "Huh? Is that some new rule?". I explain to him that you have to wait 6 months after moving here before you can apply for a provisional license. We were both a bit confused and unsure of which of us knew what they were talking about. I later investigated it online, on my expat message boards, other sources. And lo and behold it IS some vague, wishy washy suggestion that you wait the 6 months, and I am certain somewhere that it states you have to live in the UK for 180 days of the year, and when you fill out the application online it does ask when you moved to the UK. But darn it, I then see other expats saying that they applied and got their provisional license "straight away", by just going and applying on the assumption that yes, they do *plan* to live here for 180 days or more and that is good enough. And had I only known that, I wouldn't have ended up taking the test weeks from my US license being due to expire. But hindsight, what can you do? And lousy vague UK wishy-washy rules. Like when I asked the UK Border Guards at the airport which immigration line I should go in and was told "Eh, it depends, it's a matter of opinion". Gee, so would they be so lackadaisical about when my license expires and when I actually immigrated here? ;)

And to answer one question that even I had - yes, I have many passport stamps into the country after all my travels, how would they know which is which and which stamp I officially "settled" here on? Answer: they stamp the first "settling" stamp directly over your visa that is stuck in your passport. Doh.