Those
of you reading this who know me, will know that I have a special talent for embarrassing myself spectacularly given half the chance to do so. So I thought, what better
way to open this blog, than with an account of all the magical ways I found to
fail my driving test.
TEST NUMBER 1:
Driving
test number 1 was the stuff of legend amongst my friends for a while and,
gradually, I learnt to laugh at my idiocy. I was 17 years old, and had been learning
to drive for about 9 months. I felt so certain that I would definitely have
built up enough motoring prowess to pass, and I was convinced that my parents would
definitely love me more if I passed my test at 17 (not that they didn’t love me
anyway, I just felt it was always a failing in my family’s eyes that my
knowledge of cars extended solely to what colour they were and if I found them
aesthetically pleasing).
SO, on the way to my driving test, I
was feeling pretty nervous, but also quietly confident. I was a driving
GODDESS. Better than at least 99% of drivers on Sutton-In-Ashfield’s roads.
What’s more, I was going to ace this test with no minors. Such was my ideal
scenario as played out in my head.
HOWEVER, somewhat inevitably, things
did not go to plan... I drove out of the test centre and turned left as
directed. I drove towards the traffic lights I was to eventually turn right at
as I was told to, and as I approached, they turned amber. Somewhere in the
murky depths of my useless brain, I remembered my instructor telling me that if
the lights turn amber as you approach them, it can be safer to continue than to
stop. This certainly does not apply when you’re driving at about 20mph up a
hill, with no cars behind you, and the light turns amber with a plentiful
stopping distance. I thought it would impress my luminously-clad examiner and
show him how confident a driver I was if I drove through it. My foot went down
on the accelerator; his foot went down on the dual-control brake.
I knew full-well that as soon as the
examiner uses the dual-controls, the test is failed. But as I sat at the
traffic lights at the crossroads I was to turn right at, I convinced myself
that it was OK; that because the test had only been going for about 2 minutes
and I wouldn’t have actually killed anyone if I had been allowed to go through,
I might still get away with my error.
The lights turned red and amber, and
then green. I drove out into the middle of the crossroads, and turned the wheel
right... almost into the path of a car travelling straight on from the opposite
direction. Again, the examiner’s foot slammed onto the brake until there was a
safe gap for me to turn right through. I hadn’t been taught about the rule RE:
roads with no arrow filter, where you have to wait. Shaken, I exited the
crossroads, and my examiner asked me to pull over when I found a safe place. A
normal part of any driving test, so I wasn’t overly fazed. That is, until he
uttered the immortal words that will remain etched in my memory for all
eternity:
“In
the interests of public safety, I am terminating this examination.”
That
was it. In under five minutes, I had accumulated a serious fault, and a
dangerous fault, bad enough to earn me the mythical ‘walk-back’. I trotted behind
the examiner in his fluorescent DSA jacket, with every resident of the town
knowing precisely what must have happened, until I got back to the test centre
and had to wait with one of the other driving instructors (whose student
passed, if you were wondering) until mine returned. And that is how test #1
ended up.
TEST NUMBER 2:
My
second driving test occurred in the September after the first one. Sadly, I was
feeling MUCH less confident this time around, but secretly hoped that my
humbleness would be rewarded with a blue certificate. I’d given myself a
pep-talk in the bathroom mirror and told myself that I would NEVER make a
mistake while driving ever again ever.
True to form, I stalled while
pulling out of the test centre. I then drove as carefully as I could around the
rest of Sutton, until I was asked to perform a parallel park. I had never
messed one of those up, like, EVER. Even the first time I ever did one, I was
fine. So when she told me to pull up alongside the silver car and park behind
it, I was secretly rejoicing. I slowly edged up beside the silver car (I can’t
mix up my vocabulary as, like I explained before, I remember nothing more than
the colours). I reversed and checked my blind spot before spinning the wheel
left, then right, then left again and beautifully into position....
HA as if that’s what happened. After
I checked my blind spot, I turned the wheel left, then left it way too late
before turning it the other way, so I bumped the kerb. Then repeatedly tried to
rectify it for the next several minutes before the examiner said: “OK, I think
I’ve seen enough. We’ll leave it there for now shall we? Drive on and follow
the road ahead.”
She was so nice about it that
I thought maybe she really was letting me off the hook, having seen how
gracefully and non-swearily I handled the situation. I was so busy
concentrating on how nice she’d been that I forgot to look when turning at a T
junction. Nothing happened! But it certainly was one of the things listed at
the end of the test.
Yes, I made it through the entire 40
minute test. But in that 40 minutes, I had managed to accumulate 1 dangerous
fault, 2 serious faults, and 16 minors. Considering you’re only allowed a
maximum of 15 minors in one test to pass, I had failed on FOUR COUNTS.
Impressive.
TEST NUMBER 3
This
test occurred nearly a year after test #2, as shortly after taking test #2, I
had had a little mishap while practicing with my dad, where I had misjudged the
speed of traffic entering a roundabout and then I don’t really remember much
apart from being stranded in the middle of the roundabout with a car beeping at
me and my dad desperately trying to pull the handbrake on. I didn’t crash
thanks to the quick reactions of the beeping car, but it was very close and I
took a few well-earned months off driving.
Anyway, once I felt confident enough to
start driving again, I had a new instructor and a new test booked. My examiner
for test number 3 took an instant dislike to me on account of the fact that at
my ‘towering’ height of 5 foot 2.8 inches, I was about a head taller than him.
He made a point of telling me before we had even got to the car that he had a
wife and a child. To be honest, I was concentrating more on not vomming up the
snakes of nervousness whirling around in my stomach, than on whether or not
this man with a chip on his shoulder was getting laid.
This time I made it to the end of the
road before I stalled the car. Go me. The first time I was aware I had failed
this test (oh come on, you knew where this was going; that wasn’t a spoiler!)
was when I was driving down a road with traffic parked on both sides. Another
car came pelting from ahead on the other side of the road, and I had to make
the “difficult” decision of whether to drive sliiightly too close to the parked
cars on my side, or crashing into the oncoming car. Apparently my decision to
do the former was wrong(?!) and as soon as the car had passed me, the examiner
gently touched my steering wheel and told me I was too close to the parked
cars. Examiner intervention = test fail. Again.
I was pretty cross because I was (and
still am) sure I was in the right, but nevertheless I continued on with the
test for the experience if nothing else. Driving along the dual carriageway, the
examiner asked me to “take the next exit, by the traffic lights.” There were
traffic lights about half a mile in the distance, so I got ready to indicate to
come off, when I noticed a slip road appear to my left. I asked, confused, if
this was the one he meant. He said it was, so I swerved haphazardly onto it,
forgetting to actually change into a gear and ended up revving in neutral for a
moment, entirely losing control of the car for several seconds.
The
result of at the end of the test was one serious fault, two dangerous faults,
and seven minors. Well. At least I hadn’t failed on minors...!!
TEST NUMBER 4
Test
number four occurred after a two-and-a-bit year gap. Once I could afford to buy
myself driving lessons in university, and I’d realised I would need to be able
to drive should I get a job, I decided it was high time I got this pesky test
over with. After about six months of lessons, I found myself in a new waiting
room, awaiting my fourth examiner.
In-keeping with tradition, I stalled
as we left the test centre. However, the examiner, having seen how desperately
nervous I was (seriously, I was white as a sheet and shaking so much I’d
dropped the car keys twice while getting into the car), kindly told me to turn
off the ignition, take a deep breath, and start again.
WELL. I had the test from hell. As
soon as I’d left the test centre, there were policemen on motorbikes whizzing
about all over, directing traffic. Then we entered a queue of traffic, and as
soon as that had begun to clear, an ambulance came tearing up behind me and I
had to deal with that. Then, about 5 minutes later, a car broke down in front
of me and I had to manoeuvre around it. Then, when I merged onto the dual
carriageway, it was busy despite being early afternoon. Then a lorry broke down
in front of me just as I was getting ready to exit. After this, I was asked to
reverse around a VERY steep, VERY tight corner, and to do an emergency stop. Then
I approached a left-hand bend and encountered a mahooosive lorry waiting to
turn out of it and blocking it off. Guess how many seriouses I had? None. I had
passed all of these things absolutely fine, with only a handful of minors.
My fail occurred at Culverhouse
Cross. I was asked to turn left when the lights turned green. Dutifully, I
turned left as instructed, and then came face to face with pedestrian crossing
markings on the road, and red lights either side, so I stopped. A moment later,
I realised that the red lights were for the traffic on the opposite side of the
junction, and had a car NOT chosen that moment to drive behind me from where I’d
just come from, I would have got a minor. But, in true Katt-style, it was
another test-failing serious. The examiner did note that she wished she could
have just given me a slap rather than a fail, so I suppose I win in the most
minor way possible.
SUCCESS
Test
number five was my lucky one. Despite going the wrong way* in the bit where I
was supposed to direct myself in accordance to a map the examiner had shown me,
and despite positioning too close to the centre line when turning on a tight,
right hand bend, the examiner saw it in his heart to pass me with two minors.
BOOM.
And
that, ladies and gentleman, is how to fail a driving test four times, in the
most spectacular ways possible.
*certainly a sign of things to come.