I got my licence at a young age of 20... I was the oldest person in the driving school I attended for three months when I was 19 as well as one of the few drivers at the DMV near me to pass on the first try the day I got my licence...
And now, at a young age of 21, I still don't have a car, so I'm driving less than how I was before I got my licence...
(Oh well... I love to walk more, anyway...)
I don't think my driving instructor fully comprehended that it was in fact my very first time driving when I had my first lesson with him. I got in and he told me to pull out of the parking lot and take a right. Simple for anyone who's actually driven a vehicle but for me, pretty difficult.
I backed up just fine, and then when he told me to drive out of the parking lot, I forgot to put his car into drive and promptly backed into a dumpster. It got yellow paint all over his bumper. It really was his fault though for not explaining to me how to properly operate the vehicle. Plus, he had his passenger break that he failed to use in time.
In hindsight it was pretty bad. I had this tiny but shouty Greek man show up at my house in a Daihatsu Charade (which is a terrible terrible car), explained a billion things to me of which I retained 0, and then made me drive on a busy road in post-school traffic before doing hill starts.
It only got worse after that: he yelled at me if I pushed the signal lever too hard, he told me I'd break his clutch and then openly admitted he was just lying to get me to move off it faster, he'd just generally yell at me for not being faster with gear changes, taking corners too wide, stalling etc. Then he started trying to convert me to Christianity, told me who to vote for in the coming elections and made a series of sexist comments about my mum, my girlfriend, his girlfriend and women in general ("automatic/power steering is for girls", "you shouldn't let a woman control you" etc).
So I got a different instructor who wasn't a fuckwit, and things improved instantly.
Like shit. When I started driving I instantly got myself on ADD meds. Then it was less shit. I think I drove 10 hours total before I took my test, failed it once because I am really tall and the car they gave me was small enough where I couldn't see a light and almost ran through it. Then I passed the second time and I feel completely helpless. I hate driving, but it opens up so much of the world to me. I still have trouble maintaining a locked in speed, I always fluctuate.
Don't worry about it OP, if I can do it, I'm certain you can. Just watch ahead for anything and everything.
My first driving experience with my dad was pretty normal empty parking lot type stuff for a bit. My first experience with an instructor was terrible, switching from practicing in a 10 year old truck to a tiny kia that could barely make it up the hill leading into town was a rough adjustment.
As for the test itself, fail the first one because I supposedly did not stop properly at a stop sign. Second time around I did everything fine.
Note on parallel parking, I told the proctor during my test that I was not going to attempt parallel park because the spot they had set up would not be reasonable considering it was smaller than my truck. In my case that only cost me a couple points I still could have screwed up a fair bit and been fine.
I think I was fourteen. My mom put me in the driver's seat and let me coast the car into a parking spot at a church. My foot never touched the gas, it was all coasting downhill and tapping the breaks. It's hard to mess that up, but I really didn't like it. I don't think I drove much after that until I had to do in-cars for my driver's license over two years later.
After that, I had to learn how to drive a car using manual. Getting adjusted to switching gears and using a clutch didn't bother me at all. Getting the car to actually start moving in first gear was consistently bad and I think I stalled the car every third time I tried to take off. It just... bothered me that you had to practically floor the gas pedal on a car that's in a standstill and the car still wouldn't move unless you mess with the clutch correctly.
Unremarkable. Never crashed into anything, got my license one week before turning 18 (and thus won a bet against my dad) and that's pretty much it. I got the license just because. I don't have a car and I rarely drive these days.
Well first time would be with my father when I was 17 on a empty parking lot. Very much against the law but oh well XD.
Took me awhile to get the timing of the clutch and gas pedal without stalling but I eventually got there.
When it came down to official lessons my instructor quickly figured out I had practised before so instead of taking it slowly he decided to thrown into the deep end right away, and damn was it overwhelming, but it quickly started becoming second nature after a couple of lessons and by the end of the lessons I had little to no troubles with anything. Unfortunately I tend to stress with exams and don't fair well when I'm under stress, so even though I could drive perfectly during the lessons, I failed my practical exam twice. But to be fair, a large amount of people do fail the first time as our driving exams are notoriously hard. Theoretical exam I did manage to pass first time.
They gave us lessons in High School. You could sign up for them and it had all the theory tests and road hours one needed to do in order to prepare for a full license. The teacher was nice, showed us Youtube videos of bad and good driving and was patient with us in the car.
Nothing really sticks out about my first drive. I had been playing driving games with a steering rig on my old gaming computer for years prior to that (Midtown Madness 2! ) and had actually tried LEGAL driving in my games.
Took a little bit of getting used to, still don't like parallel parking all that much but I can drive.
Funnily enough I had my second lesson yesterday. There were points I was spot on and did everything right but I still messed up a lot. I'm not very good at breaking and my first lesson I couldn't do clutch at all and kept stalling whereas I've mastered it this time.
The first lesson was pretty disastrous but unlike most people I went into the first lesson without ever sitting behind a car before. Most people get their parents to help them but I hadn't. At one point I felt like crying because I was doing so badly.
I feel more confident after yesterdays lesson but I'm still worried cos it's a lot to take in and remember. It's a bit harder in the UK cos we mainly use manual too.
I want to keep at it though, at least I can say I tried.
I first drove with an instructor from a school in my region (manual gears ofc). The guy was extremely strict and even though I picked up switching gears extremely fast, he was constantly yelling at me to look right, left, behind me and everywhere else EXCEPT in front of me. Which meant that I was too scared to really steer well and too late to react to stuff happening in front of me, resulting in more shouting.
After a few lessons he did calm down somewhat and I picked up a lot about switching gears early to conserve feul etc.
Passed the test on my first go, even though I had another unfriendly and even legendarily feared examinator at that particular centre.
Mine wasn't bad at all, now my second attempt was my worst. I took a turn going about forty miles an hour, that scared the shit out of my Dad. Then I ran a stop sign going about fifty-five miles an hour. Luckily, he checked to make sure no accident would occur. Even worse, I almost got pulled over when I had my permit, but the cop turned down the wrong road looking for me.
I lived in different parts of Montana growing up so I'd "driven" (more like steered while sitting on my dad's lap) on forest/farm roads since I was like 7-8.
But my first time actually driving on "real" roads was when I was 10-11 years old and we were living about 25 miles south of Canada. My sister was 14-15 at the time and was in Drivers Ed so on the weekends my dad would throw us in the car, drive us a mile or so out of town, pull over and have one of us drive to this bar/grill just south of the boarder. We'd have lunch, play some pool (also when I learned billards coincidently) then the other would drive back to town.
I was still so small that i had to sit on the thickest pillow we had in the house just to see over the dashboard.
Oh good times. My best friend and I took a joy ride in his mom's car in the middle of the night. Thing was it was midnight in winter, so there was snow everywhere. To this day I am shocked that I managed not to crash the car as neither of us knew how to drive (we did almost slide directly into a mailbox though, and spun the car on a bad turn). I actually never had an actual lesson. From there I got my license, and I did all the tests after screwing around with cars until I could. I didn't even read the booklet, I just guessed all the answers on the written portion. I got my first, second, and third license in the first time (I lived in Ontario at the time). Driving is easy.
I kind of "fell into" driving without any formal lessons of which to speak. I'd driven sneakily a handful of times before 17 and at 16 I got a moped (not a scooter, a trail bike). It was a 50cc Honda [http://img2.findthebest.com/sites/default/files/968/media/images/2012_John_Deere_CRF70F_6_Dirt_Bike_86182.jpg].
As a result of taking and passing my CBT and riding that moped for almost a year, I already had my provisional driving license and already knew how to use gears, clutch, accelerator, brakes, etc before I even legally sat in a car. I had a few half-lessons with my father, usually driving to or from home, school or relatives/friends houses when he'd pick me up. I learned the "manoeuvres" pretty quickly and passed my driving test first time 1 month after my 17th birthday (with 7 minor faults, 2 of which were in speed).
They then announced a change to the laws surrounding motorcycle (Category A) tests, so I applied to do it really quickly to get in before the introduction of the theory test or the changes to Category A/A1. I luckily passed that too despite one mistake (that I knew I made as soon as I made it).
My first car was an F-Reg Ford Escort [https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQaAApMssapt9iFeGPsx_DELFKZwVpMURGQSIKG9M1GUWi4G97z], followed about 4-5 years later by an R-Reg Escort [http://cdn.modifiedcars.com/uploads/2010/12/209304-2200x1300.jpg]. I sold the latter about 6 years ago and bought my first ever car brand-new and I got a Volvo C30 (this model and colour [http://images.jaxsportscars.com/pictures/55677116.jpg], but with cooler alloys).
Wishing the OP the best of luck for their lessons and eventual test.
I first practiced driving in mom's 1984 Camaro, the car that became mine when I turned 16. Either my mom or my stepdad would take me to my high school's parking lot when it was empty so I could get a feel for the handling and learn all of the knobby-dos. Nothing difficult.
My drivers ed test? Um...
First of all, the instructor had me drive through downtown Golden, Colorado (known primarily as the home of Coors Beer) for some residential driving. That's also where he had me parallel park. You would think that any sane driving instructor would ask a student to parallel park between two cars parked against a sidewalk curb, right? Not this sadist - I had to parallel park between two cars parked against an eight-foot-high concrete fucking wall! No curb between the road or the wall. No sidewalk either. Just street, meet wall. If I'd screwed up the parking, I would have torn half of the instructor's car's bumper off, even if I didn't touch the other cars!
So then it was time to test my driving on a curvy road. Correction: a windy, uphill, mountain road that's popular with cyclists but has no bicycle lane or shoulders on which the cyclists can ride. Oh, and the occasional 100-foot drop off a cliff face if you make too big of a mistake.
Meet Lookout Mountain Road:
The "M" on the mountain is really there - it's made of rocks painted white, and is maintained by the students of the nearby Colorado School of Mines
I drove the entire road: up from Golden, past the Buffalo Bill museum (instructor didn't let me stop to throw a penny on Bill's grave though!), down the other side, and out on to I-70. Then I had to drive I-70 east into Denver right before rush hour, did some city driving, and then back to the driving school.
Thank you so much and much appreciated. Also, the view in that pic looks amazing but driving on it for the first time look scaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaary. :'(
I am not going to really disagree with you there. F1 has gotten better this year but the complaining and bitching and whining about engine noise, hybrid system and new rules really put me off at times. WEC has hybrid systems and I don't here any bitching about it which is why I prefer Lemans 24hr and endurance events over F1 a lot of the time. Prototypes over Formula I say.
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) and had actually tried LEGAL driving in my games.
