Restricted

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.