At the
beginning of the year, I sat my restricted drivers’ licence test. I don’t know
how many foreign countries have anything similar to the restricted drivers’
licence, but where I live, it’s the stage in between being a learner driver and
being fully licensed to drive on the road. At the end of the month, the test
was to become a lot longer and harder in order to minimize the amount of
inexperienced young drivers on the roads. But for drivers like me, who were
nearly ready to sit their restricted on the old test, it would mean a lot of
extra time and driving practise if we failed to make it through. My driving
instructor decided about a month beforehand that we could get me ready in time
to get me through the old test, so a date for the test was booked and a number
of rigorous driving lessons commenced.
When
this was first decided, I had been a bit dubious as to whether I was really as
ready as everyone around me seemed to think I was, but by the time the test
date came around, I was feeling cool as a cucumber about the whole thing.
Fortunately,
I had caffeine to set right the turmoil that was raging inside me.
Luckily for me, this test was not to be a repeat of my music performance last year. By the time I got to the testing station, I was not jittery from
caffeine overdose – just a bit nervous, as anyone would be. At the testing
station, they took my application form and told me to take a seat. It wasn’t
long before the testing officer appeared and we went out to my car. He made a
joke about my name, which – awkwardly enough – I was too nervous to get. Before
the test started, he seemed like a genuinely friendly and good-natured person,
but the moment he sat down in the passenger seat, his poker face was on. Any
direction he gave me was delivered in practically a monotone. I had no idea how
well (or not) I was doing. It was a little unnerving.
Despite my nerves and the testing officer’s uncanny ability to not give anything away, I was managing the test pretty well. I checked all my side streets, indicated whenever I needed to, remembered to check my blind spots when pulling out and not to ride the clutch when pulling in. The ‘slow-speed manoeuvre’ he asked me to do was an angle park in a busy carpark, which was both a relief and a disappointment after weeks of practising parallel parks, three-point turns, and reversing into driveways of varying shapes and sizes. And it was an angle park I executed unusually well. I was proud of it. I then botched things a bit by going up on the curb when leaving the carpark, but no-one needs to know.
All was
going reasonably smoothly, until we hit the home stretch.
The
last part of the test was the 100k drive, in which the testing officer directed
me to a piece of road in a 100kph speed zone and expected me to drive at 95 or
above. The stretch of road the testing officers used for this part of the test
was really a nasty piece of work: a long, narrow, bumpy lane frequently used by
farm machinery. Nevertheless, I hit the accelerator and concentrated on getting
my speed up as quickly as possible whilst ignoring all the bumps the car was
taking. The needle was sitting around 85 when, up ahead of me, near the end of
the road but not too far away, I saw a large piece of farm machinery pull out
on my side of the road.
I hit
the brakes, as any inexperienced driver on their driving test would do, and
dropped a couple of gears as I approached. I sat behind it, at around 45, just
beginning to relax from the fact that I wouldn’t have to take the car up to 100
on this road after all, when the testing officer said,
At this
point, I felt sure I’d failed the test. Still, stammering out some convoluted
lie as to why I hadn’t yet passed the mechanical whale lumbering down the road
in front of me didn’t really seem like the wisest move I could make given the
situation – whether I’d passed or not. So I stammered out the truth instead.
This wasn’t actually because I was completely afraid of overtaking vehicles (I was only partially afraid of that particular activity), but more that, in all of my driving practise leading up to the test, I’d never once been presented with an opportunity to do so. If anything, it was the other way around: a steady stream of cars shooting past my right window as they overtook me. Nevertheless, when the testing officer had asked me why I hadn’t yet affected an overtaking manoeuvre, I felt a stab of fear: was overtaking something I was supposed to be well-practised in before sitting my restricted? As I was thinking this, the officer said,
I
looked in my rearview mirror.
The only traffic behind me was another vehicle identical to the one I was following, well in the distance. Nevertheless,
I wasn’t about to argue that there was
no traffic to hold up, or that we were nearing the end of the road and it was
getting dangerous to pass. I simply gritted my teeth and did what I had to do:
slapped on my indicator, checked ahead to make sure there was no oncoming
traffic, and pulled out into the wrong side of the road.
I remember
it as one of the most nerve-wracking things I’ve done in my wee life. The whole
time I was on the other side of the road, I expected some car to come
barrelling down and collide head-first with me. Fortunately, that didn’t
happen, and I was able to get safely past the giant tractor and back onto my
side of the road.
The
testing officer then instructed me to drive back to the testing station, where
another obstacle awaited me. He instructed me to pull into one of the three
parks in front of the station, which was problematic, as one was occupied by
one car, and the other two were occupied by another car whose driver obviously
didn’t know the meaning of ‘between the white lines’. I freaked out a little
and sort of ended up parking behind the car that didn’t know how to park, which
made me worry that the owner was going to appear at any minute and complain
that I’d parked him in. The testing officer didn’t seem to be worried about it;
he merely proceeded to tell me how I’d done.
I couldn't believe it.
He told
me that yes, I’d really passed, and proceeded to write me out a provisional
license that I was instructed to have on me AT ALL TIMES while I was driving
until I received my actual license in the post. I sort of thanked him and we
got out of the car. I managed to stumble into the testing station, feeling
relieved and overjoyed and a little nervy all at the same time, the latter of
which was no doubt left over from my overtaking ordeal. I proceeded to tell my
mother, who was waiting for me, the good news. And that is the story of how I
overtook for the first time on my driving test and somehow managed not to fail.
I went
for my first drive on my own that evening.
As I
was pulling into the road, I saw another car coming towards me.
As far as I was concerned, we’d just shared a moment of great cosmic significance, forever spiritually linked by the fact that we were both licensed to drive cars without a supervisor. But in reality, he was probably completely unaware that this moment had even taken place.
