As my Theory test post was popular, I thought I would create a blog post about my practical driving test, which I had a year ago today! I typed this blog post ages ago but it has just been sitting in the drafts so I'm publishing it today as I remembered it was still sitting here and wanted to reminisce!
I wasn't planning on telling anyone, other than my mum, dad and brother when it was... but then work guessed so most of the people at work knew. I didn't want many people to know when it was because it would have made me feel a lot worse if I failed and I got it into my head anyway that I was going to fail. So this blog post is going to tell my experiences of my driving test and how it works. I like hearing about other people's driving test experiences so I hope you enjoy reading about mine.
I had my driving test on Monday the 9th of November 2015, and my first piece of advice is to book well in advance, under your instructors recommendation! I booked mine way back in July, as soon as I passed my theory due to my instructors recommendation. It was scary booking it as back in July, I felt I wasn't ready for it at all and felt like I wouldn't be. November was the earliest time that they had available so I looked at all the times and booked it for half past ten. I knew I wanted to do it in the morning, so then I wouldn't spend all day thinking about it if it was in the afternoon. Book it and put it to the back of your mind. Keep practising in your lessons, ask questions if you are unsure of anything. If I failed my driving test, I would have to have waited until February to get another test and even then I would have to wait a few weeks before I could actually book it. They do book up quick, so make sure you book a few months in advance!
The next thing I want to talk about is the way the test is conducted. My instructor explained this to me before so I could understand what would happen, and it made me feel better knowing kind of what to expect. I had a one hour (ish... it didn't quite work out as planned) lesson before the test, practising manoeuvres and having a drive around. Then we would arrive at the test centre ten minutes before (again, didn't quite work out), practise a reverse park and go into the centre and sit in the waiting room. Then the examiner calls your name, you go and sign a few forms, get asked if you would like your instructor present with you in your test or at the debriefing. Then you have to go outside, read a number plate to test your eyesight and show the examiner to your car. From there, they will make a couple of vehicle checks of the car and ask you a couple of questions. Then they will ask you to start the engine and the test begins from there. The test lasts approximately 40 minutes. In the test, there is an independent driving part where you drive independently for ten minutes with no direction. From then, you will have directions from the examiner. You will be asked to pull over on a convenient place on the left of the road four times in your test. You will be asked to perform one out of four manoeuvres. You may be asked to go on the dual carriageway, not all tests do. Likewise with the emergency stop, one in three tests have the emergency stop. Then you will drive back to the test centre following the directions of the examiner and as soon as you stop the car, the debriefing takes place and you find out whether you have passed or failed.
My lesson started at 9.30am that morning. The morning wasn't the best to be honest, I was stressing out over the Show Me Tell Me questions as I kept getting them muddled up and confused. The questions themselves were actually quite simple but some I just couldn't get into my head and I really didn't want to be faulted before I had even started driving. There are 19 possible questions, and out of that 19, you are asked 2 before you start. Lets just say there were a couple I didn't particularly want to come up. I decided not to stress and read Catching Fire to take my mind off the questions before I left. Once I was in the car, having my lesson... I was fine. It was just the tense wait at home which was awful. We had a few timing issues, my instructor thought my test was at quarter to as for some reason he wrote it down wrong so we didn't quite manage to get through everything in time. Anyway, I practised all four manoeuvres and I actually don't mind them too much, I have never struggled with them massively. You get asked to perform one of them on your test, it will either be a bay park, reverse round the corner, three point turn or a parallel park. The one I really didn't want to come up was the reverse round the corner as that was the one I would most likely mess up on. My favourite is the bay park, simply because I can just do it, I always have done. I wouldn't have minded parallel park or the three point turn either. The lesson went reasonably ok, apart from one roundabout where I could have gone, it was safe to have gone and I was going to go... but I froze as at that point I was driving to the test centre. It dawned on me that this was the time, I had made it to this day after all of my lessons. And I think it was at a roundabout as those were the things I really struggled with when driving and I only recently got used to them a few months ago. My instructor was like "what are you doing? Why have you stopped?" and I was sitting there going "I'm sorry, I have no idea what just happened to me" That was the time I was closest to tears as at that point, it really did feel real. Luckily, he was like "it is ok, most people have moments of madness before their tests," and that was the most I freaked out to be honest.
I got to the test centre and did one final bay park, as well as a last minute run through of the questions with minutes to spare. So we went in... the automatic door was somehow jammed so we had to squeeze through it the best we could and we sat down for a couple of minutes in the waiting room with Paul giving me words of encouragement which really did reassure me as from that moment, I wasn't nervous. I was going to give it my best shot, just drive how I normally would and if it wasn't good enough, at least I could get better and learn from my mistakes. There was no point in being nervous and that is what you have to keep in mind.
So I went in with an open mind, my examiner called my name and I had to sign a couple of declarations and then I had to lead the way outside to the car. There was no choice for me in whether my instructor could come with me for the test... for the past week or so, he has had the flu and been coughing a lot, cancelling all other lessons apart from mine (as my test was the closest), so he had to wait in the waiting room. And then we came to the dodgy automatic door, to which the examiner said to me "Hold on a second Amy" and started pushing and pulling the door, trying to fix it! Once he fixed it, I did my eyesight test part and then led him to the car, and he asked me to go inside while he made a few vehicle checks.
Then he got in the car and his stomach started rumbling really loudly, to which he started apologising for, so I said "oh are you hungry?" I still can't believe I really asked that, but he replied with "no I've just had a chocolate digestive and cup of tea, I'm probably in the middle of digesting it right now!" After that digestion discussion, he got straight into it by starting with the Show Me Tell Me questions. I was initially scared for this but the questions I got were the ones I knew well, one was a show me one about the demister controls and the other was a pretty simple one as well. And then I warned my examiner that I do have a tendency to talk to myself when driving when I get in difficult situations and he was fine about that, looked like he had heard it before. And in the end, I didn't, I just kept apologising randomly in the random parts of my test! Then came the words I couldn't believe... "I would like you to do a bay park either on the right or left hand side of the car park." My absolute favourite manoeuvre at the start of my test... I couldn't have asked for anything better. But the next part was easily the most embarrassing part of my test... I couldn't turn on the engine. So for two minutes, I was turning the keys and the car wasn't responding. Such a great way to start my test, a great first impression of a future driver! Finally it managed to start and I turned to my examiner and was like "I don't know what happened there!" and he was like "neither do I!" So I did my bay park, and I was pleased with how it went, as according to my instructor it was "perfect." My instructor was in the waiting room watching and apparently he said to all the other instructors "Ahhh she is starting off with a bay park, that is her favourite manoeuvre!"
I got asked to exit the test centre, after being given a set of instructions that eventually led me to the dual carriageway. On the way there, I got a fault as I was on a roundabout and failed to check one of my mirrors when moving slightly more to the left. The problem was as at the moment to enter this dual carriageway, I had to go through all these road works with roundabouts, cones and building work everywhere. I knew there was a possibility of me going through all of this before my test but that was the last thing I wanted to do, especially as the road works changed the route of the road every single time I had a driving lesson so I wasn't 100% sure where I was going. Plus it had started to rain harder and I couldn't remember how to turn on the wipers to keep them automatically going and I couldn't think it through as I was concentrating on how to find my way through all the road works! Luckily, once I was on the dual carriageway and at 70mph, I could figure out how to turn the wipers on for this now torrential rain that was pouring down, and concentrate on overtaking other cars, lorries and at one point a highway maintenance vehicle, as well as constantly checking the speed and mirrors. That is another thing, keep your eyes everywhere, keep checking your speed and mirrors as well as where you are going. I was fine on the dual carriageway, and part of my independent driving was on there as well as exiting on a massive roundabout which I was terrified about as it had all these different lanes as I needed to make sure I was in the right one. I felt like I was doing ok at this point, I felt comfortable and confident to be honest.
Then I got told to pull over to the left and stop (1/4). Which I did fine, but I knew what was going to happen next immediately. I had stopped on this part of the road a few times in my lessons and the same thing always happens when pulling away. The road was quite busy and it was hard to find a proper gap to go. So I decided to go, did all the right things, then had a moment of hesitation and stalled. Two faults in one moment. I didn't panic or anything, I just got it started again and once I was ready, I went again. After that point, I can't remember all of my test. I remember pulling over three more times and they were much more successful. One of them, my examiner asked me to perform the emergency stop. 1/3 tests. And I only had one lesson on it. It had just been raining as well so the road was wet, but I did it exactly how I would do it in an emergency, but I got a fault for that as I skidded the tiniest bit as I was aggressive. It is an emergency, that is how I would be if there was one so I am not really fussed about that one!
There were a few funny moments, like when my examiner asked me to turn right at the traffic lights and I started indicating left when I stopped and he was like "That was the right" and the moment when I was going through this road with parked cars on both sides and this van which as coming towards me suddenly started reversing, swerving in and out of these parked cars, to which I said "I have no idea what he is doing." And once we were heading back to the test centre after the 40 minutes of my test, I honestly didn't know what the outcome would be. I felt I had done my best, but at that point I was ignoring the fact I was even on my test and just driving normally, back on the dual carriageway and through all those road works yet again, where the speed limit was only 30mph. I didn't feel nervous one bit on my test, only in the run up to it but now it was the end I was slightly nervous about the outcome. Once we got back, there was a queue of cars waiting to enter the test centre so I got told to stop the car and turn off the engine. And he gave me the unbelievable words of "congratulations Amy you have passed your driving test!" and the first thing I said was "Wow. REALLY?" I was a bit in shock, my instructor came out of the waiting room and got in the car, and we went through the debrief, where the examiner talked through my minor faults and what I could do to improve. I then got given a pass certificate, a sheet with my faults on and a car magazine. After the shock of passing, my instructor drove me home while talking about my practical test, motorway learning (as no learners can go on them!) and owing me some money, now I don't need any more lessons! I am going to miss the lessons, they were really good and fun, I got on with my instructor really well and he was great at teaching as he just understood how I work as a person, apart from my logic of me convincing myself I was going to fail on my practical. That is the main thing of passing I personally think, get a good instructor, be motivated to learn and take responsibility for your own actions/decisions/mistakes. I still can't quite believe it, two weeks later (that is how long ago I typed this post... two weeks later after actually passing!)
Like I mentioned in a previous post, I was looking for a silver Vauxhall corsa as I liked the look of them, I never really considered another car. My parents agreed to pay for the car as an early Christmas present, so long as it wasn't too expensive, and I would pay the insurance as that would take most of the money. So after a couple of weeks of ebay hunting, my dad bidded for a Vauxhall Corsa that was in .... He was due to collect it on Saturday 5th December but on Friday night when I was round my friends, I got a phone call from him saying he was having second thoughts after speaking to the man on the phone, but he had found another one on Gumtree that he was going to look at instead in Leicester. But that meant he had to leave at 6 in the morning so from my friends house, I got picked up and spent the night at Jordans as otherwise I had no way of getting into work the next morning. So I went to work, unaware of what was happening and got a text on my break saying I had a car! That was an amazing feeling.
Almost a year on (I got my car a month after passing my test), I still have my car which I absolutely love (Bertie/Flo) and I'm still driving. I'm getting more comfortable in the car driving and can't believe it was a year ago today that I actually passed, time goes by so quickly!
So yeah, it's all good...
Amy :)
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