The News Wheel Editors: Our Driver’s Ed Experiences
As a teenager, learning to drive is stressful. Actually, learning to drive at any time in your life is pretty stressful. Driving is a big task and there are a lot of risks that come with it. Most new drivers go through a driver’s ed program, and while the program teaches you a lot about the rules of the road, most students emerge with stories to tell — including some of the editors here at The News Wheel.
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Rebecca BernardWhen I was assigned my in-car instructor, I asked around and found out that “Eddie” was a bit of a legend for being the worst. To be fair, this guy could do Ohio’s maneuverability test from the passenger’s seat with a student applying the gas, but he had some weird rules. For example, all turns had to be made at 10 mph or less, and that included left turns. He was insanely strict about speed limits, which means a lot of people passed me giving me the finger, and if a traffic light was “stale green” I had to apply the brakes as I was approaching it just in case. My parents still joke about Eddie to this day. |
Zachary BerryMy father taught both my two older brothers how to operate an automobile by taking them to a section of the local Air Force base where he worked that was abandoned on the weekends. When my turn finally arrived, he continued the tradition by bringing me to the exact same spot. Fortunately, there were always abandoned traffic cones nearby that we could set up to practice my upcoming maneuverability test skills. Unfortunately, my father decided to tech me “road awareness” by repeatedly shouting out “DEER!” at random times during my practice drives, at which point I was expected to stop. Of course, because we could only practice there on weekends, and because my brother often used the family car to drive back and forth to work during the weekend, I wasn’t confident enough to complete my driver’s test until right before I started college. |
Whitney BurchMy dad coached most of my practice drives before I got my license. He was quite obsessed with the “electronic eye” part of the traffic light that purportedly detects when a car is waiting at the light or not. He always said that if the light was long, just inch up a bit further in the lane so the “electronic eye” saw the car and would trigger the green light to appear more quickly. I’m still paranoid about this feature of traffic lights and occasionally stare at them to see if I can catch a glimpse of the hidden sensor that I later found out is in some (not all) traffic lights, as my dad would’ve had me believe. |
Angela LinI’ve repressed the horror that was driving class, so the only memory that I have from learning how to drive is when I brought my dad along with me and we set up my cones in my high school parking lot to practice the maneuverability test. When my older sister was practicing a couple years before me, my dad made her cry. I thought, psh, what a loser, I won’t cry. I was maybe five minutes in before I was already drenched in tears and hitting every cone. My dad’s an amazing person, but I guess being in the driver’s seat made me extra sensitive to criticism. I don’t know what it is about driving with him in the passenger’s seat, but he broke both of his daughters. I nailed the maneuverability test, though, so I guess the tears worked. |
Daniel SuscoProbably the funniest part of my driving learning process was trying to learn from my mother how to drive stick on a six-speed Nissan Cube. I stalled it out at least a dozen times in a row in this parking lot at the end of the street and each time, we would rock up a little incline, stall, and roll back down. When we got back to the house, my brother needed a ride somewhere, and my mom said I could drive him in the Cube. He replied, “Or we could just take the dining room chairs and scoot our way there.” Later, when my dad tried to teach me, I had more success, but also tried to start it out in third gear going up an incredibly steep hill, making black smoke waft out from under the car. Clearly, a stunt driver I am not. |
Meg ThomsonSitting in the passenger’s seat, you see other drivers do a lot of things that you probably shouldn’t do in driver’s ed. I didn’t realize that driving across an empty parking lot, ignoring all of the lines, was one of them. During one of my evening driving sessions, the instructor asked me to go to the corner of the parking lot to practice the maneuverability test, so I started to drive diagonally across the empty lot — that is, until she quite literally began screaming at me. I was only going around 10 miles an hour, but by her reaction, you’d have thought I was barreling through a school zone at 70. |
Kurt VerlinWhile I was doing my in-car driver’s ed with an instructor, a pickup truck driver crossed the road ahead of me when he really did not have the time. My instructor went for his passenger’s side brake pedal, but ended up not having to use it because I (proudly) reacted fast enough to slow down and avoid the collision. The instructor congratulated me on my quick reactions, but not before vigorously flipping off the pickup truck driver. I thought it was hilarious because in driver’s ed class, we’d spent a bunch of time discussing driver communication and how flipping off other drivers was not an ideal way to behave. |
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The News Wheel is a digital auto magazine providing readers with a fresh perspective on the latest car news. We’re located in the heart of America (Dayton, Ohio) and our goal is to deliver an entertaining and informative perspective on what’s trending in the automotive world. See more articles from The News Wheel.