Dri­ving Around Nia­gara, Jan­u­ary 2010

I feel super good today. I finally over­came one of my biggest fears: dri­ving. I passed my driver’s license!

It all started exactly ten years ago in France. I had signed up for the new “learner per­mit pro­gram”: the idea was to learn with an instruc­tor (manda­tory in France) before pass­ing the road test at 18 years old (the min­i­mum age for tak­ing it).  After many months of sit­ting in a class learn­ing the­ory, I passed the dreaded writ­ten test. At first, I was very excited by the idea of dri­ving. I didn’t mind cars. It was all a mat­ter of prac­tice, I thought.

I can’t pin­point the exact moment when I became ter­ri­fied of dri­ving. I was doing fine at first. Steer­ing the wheel, push­ing the clutch, first gear, sec­ond gear — there are no auto­matic cars in France, the stan­dard is man­ual trans­mis­sion. I started dri­ving around the city with the instruc­tor. He was a fairly old guy, who loved cars and hated peo­ple who didn’t fall in love with the Freudian stick shift: “can you feel how smooth it is?” No, I couldn’t. I didn’t care either. To me, dri­ving was get­ting from point A to point B safely.

I never seemed to under­stand where I was going. Either I was too focused on the clutch, either I was just dumb. My instruc­tor opted for the sec­ond choice. “Turn right here. NO NO NOOOO Not here!” Half of the time, I didn’t even under­stand what I was doing wrong. I was relieved when stop­ping at an inter­sec­tion behind another car — at least, I wouldn’t have to go first and pos­si­bly take the wrong way. I just had to fol­low. It also gave me a pre­vi­ous extra few sec­ond to not stall.

My city had the most round­abouts in France. French just love round­abouts: big, small, dec­o­rated with a foun­tain in the mid­dle — we spent hours the­o­riz­ing on how to drive on them (cars to your left have the right-of-way etc.).

Even­tu­ally, I had to go for my road test along with three other stu­dents. We felt like lambs to the slaugh­ter. Both of the other stu­dents failed right away. When my turn came, I started the car fine, drove for a few min­utes and almost felt con­fi­dent. But a few sec­onds later, the exam­iner braked sud­denly and yelled “look at what you are doing!” I parked safely on the side of the street, puz­zled. “What did I do?” “The round­about, the round­about!” I looked behind me. I didn’t see any round­about, just a four-way inter­sec­tion on which I had stopped, sig­nalled, yielded etc.  Turned out that at the mid­dle of the inter­sec­tion, there was a tiny dot painted: a new round­about in con­struc­tion. I had failed my test.

I had to wait 6 months to take another road test — by no mean a manda­tory wait­ing period but the result of a back­log. Road tests in France and noto­ri­ously dif­fi­cult and expen­sive and tak­ing a dri­ver license is very expen­sive: around 1 400 €.  Then, the exam­iner went on strike. Another few months wait.

Even­tu­ally I got a test date right before my writ­ten exam, valid for three years, expired. In between, I had been to Aus­tralia and New Zealand, where I had dri­ven a bit on empty roads. It was bound to hap­pen: when I took my road test, at the first inter­sec­tion, the exam­iner asked me to turn right. I sig­nalled, or at least I thought I did. Because my lat­est expe­ri­ence dri­ving had been in Aus­tralia, where you drive on the left side on the road, I turned on the wipers instead of the sig­nal (com­mands are on the oppo­site side). I laughed ner­vously and real­ized my mis­take right away. Too late: I had failed again and my writ­ten test had expired. I had to start all over from the begin­ning again.

I never did. I moved to Canada, and decided to take my dri­ver license there. Ontario has a grad­u­ated licens­ing sys­tem: first you take your G1 and you must drive accom­pa­nied by a licensed dri­ver and must not drive on free­ways. Then you take your G2, the pro­ba­tion­ary licence where all major restric­tions are lifted. Finally, you take your G license.

Tak­ing the writ­ten test was uncer­e­mo­ni­ous, unlike in France. You just have to show up at the Min­istry of Trans­porta­tion – no need to make an appoint­ment or to take classes. Just bor­row the Dri­ver Hand­book at the library, study, pay $10 and take the test. I passed right away. I explained my French dri­ving sto­ries and for $125 I was given a G1 license on the spot.

Sure, I couldn’t drive alone or on free­ways, but I was happy with that. I was too scared of dri­ving any­way. I used my licence mostly as a piece of ID. I thought it could stay like that for­ever… until I received a let­ter this sum­mer. My G1 was only valid for 5 years, I had to pass the G2 test or I’d lose my G1. Damn it.

Shortly after, the exam­in­ers went on strike. I freaked out — it felt like a déjà-vu. I decided I had been scared for long enough. The strike ended abruptly after Christ­mas. I booked a road test and arranged to take 5 hours prac­tice lessons with an instruc­tor. He was very patient and seemed relaxed with me. He cor­rected a few things here and there but told me I should pass no prob­lem. Really?

I spent time dri­ving around with Feng. I prac­ticed par­al­lel park­ing and dri­ving in the snow. To me own sur­prise, I could actu­ally drive. Sud­denly, road rules made sense. I wasn’t scared any­more. I knew where and when to look, which streets to turn in and what do to.

I showed up at my test ner­vous and scared. My hands were shak­ing. The exam­iner got in the car, made me do a three-point-turn and par­al­lel park­ing. I did just fine. We took a short drive around the Min­istry. As soon as I parked, he handed me my papers back and told me I had passed. As sim­ple as that.

I walked into the Min­istry, was con­grat­u­lated, had my pic­ture taken again, got a tem­po­rary license and was told I’d receive my full licence within three weeks.

I feel great. Not just for pass­ing the test but for feel­ing con­fi­dent to drive for the first time in my life. And mostly for over­com­ing a ten years old stu­pid fear.

Have you ever felt like that?

Related arti­cles:

1. I Am A Pas­sen­ger… And I Ride And I Ride
2. Ten Things I Can’t Do (and really, does that matter ?)
3. Snow Fall !
4. The Wall
5. Through The Storm