Skip to content

Community: Real Life

Second time unlucky


Joe

Joe is 20 years-old and lives in Poole, Dorset. He's decided to let us in on his experience of learning to drive, and promises to tell us exactly what happens when he takes his test; minors, majors and everything.
Entry: 6
Date: 04/07/2008

Oh dear, he's gone and done it again. Not even a perfect emergency stop could help Joe pass his test this time.

"ARGH," I screamed, as I ran to the front of an army of angst-ridden young men and women at the driving centre. My scream broke into a manic laugh as I hurled a brick through the window of the driving centre. I was jumping and hopping about with excitement and an overwhelming feeling of liberty. I stood back to admire a dozen other bricks smashing gloriously into glass and wood. What a beautiful sight. Then my team of enraged learner drivers tied their ties to their heads, ripped their shirts open and sat huddled around a burning DSA sign singing Kumbaya.

Then I woke up from my daydream and reality hit home. "Do you want to know where you went wrong, Joe?" said the driving examiner. I was still shaking with a cocktail of emotions swirling around my exhausted brain."Yes, I'd love to," I said, with gritted teeth, looking around the road for any loose bricks.

Why again?

On my second driving test I got four majors and a number of minors. You fail if you have just one major, so today was not a good day. It turned out that I had failed within seconds of starting the test because I pulled into the middle of the road in front of a taxi. I didn't see it and I still don't know what he's talking about.

Excuse me if I sound ever so slightly frustrated, I still can't get over the fact that I failed in my first test because of the emergency stop. Those three split seconds are haunting me. Is there anything more enraging as injustice? OK, let's get some perspective. It was just a driving test and my other mistakes in this test did possibly warrant a fail.

The second mistake was probably caused by nerves. I approached a mini roundabout with a car waiting at the entrance to my right. The lady driving it hesitated and I took that as a prompt for me to go. I never knew this rule existed, but you're supposed to wait and give way to anybody approaching the roundabout on an entrance to your right. I drove on happily, thinking that it was all going really well. "You've got this one sussed, Joe," I thought to myself. "You've only gone and done it! You're the champion of the world!"

"Excuse me if I sound ever so slightly frustrated, I still can't get over the fact that I failed in my first test because of the emergency stop."

It's not my fault!

Joe on his bike

Looks like it's back to the bike for Joe

By my third mistake I couldn't help but notice that the instructor was gripping the arms of his chair like a tramp in a dentist. In Bournemouth there's a really confusing one-way system that looks like a roundabout. I was sat at some traffic lights waiting to enter the system and I was instructed to take the fourth exit. Confusing it for a roundabout I decided that I had to be in the right of two lanes, so when the lights went green I veered into the right hand lane. Crossing lanes like that was deemed as seriously dangerous driving, despite the fact that there was nobody around, but I suppose he needs to feel confident that I wouldn't do it whatever the circumstance.

My final mistake was silly. I was at the traffic lights of a road that had a 30mph limit for roughly 200 metres and then it turned into a 40mph zone. I forgot this and assumed that it was 40 all the way through. As I was accelerating from 30 to 40mph he actually had to tell me that it wasn't 40 yet. Oh dear. I knew I had failed, but you have to kid yourself that you haven't or else you'd be tempted to just give up.

Maybe it's because I did such a perfect drive in the first exam that I thought I only had to get the emergency stop right (which I did) in the second test and it would be fine. I think I let complacency set in. That's the best theory I can come up with. Either that or it was because I said I was a Liverpool FC fan before he declared in a northern accent that he followed Manchester United. It wasn't my fault that I failed, it was everyone else's. That makes me feel better about myself now.

I just want to pass

The truth is I desperately want to pass this test because I'm fed up with it hanging over me. It takes quite an emotional toll because I know that I'm safe and my instructor agrees, yet I see maniacs on the road every day. It feels so illogical. Also, I find it so utterly frustrating that I have to wait at least a month every time I want to retake it because the waiting list in Bournemouth is so long.

Oh well, maybe next time. I keep telling myself that it's just a case of doing it over and over until I pass, no matter how humiliating. Fingers crossed that it will be third time lucky.


Bookmark with:What are these?

Also on TheSite.org