I still remember the Driver’s Ed class I took…
It was the summer after my Freshman year of high school and I was so nervous that I was going to fail. Then what would happen?!?!
I wouldn’t be able to get a car, I wouldn’t be able to have a life, and I’d just hang out at my parents’ house for the rest of my life.
Of course, I ended up passing and it was fine…
But I guess that some kids didn’t do so well…
People took to AskReddit to share their stories of student drivers gone wild.
1. Can’t win this argument.
“The girl who got in an accident on her driving test that she caused (I believe she ran a red that had been red for a while and hit a car that had right of way), in front of a cop.
She didn’t understand why she failed and tried to argue about it and schedule an appointment for the same day to retake.”
2. I think it’s too late.
“A student ran over a grey squirrel.
Stopped the car, got out and got it.
Brought it back to the car and asked if she could bring it to a vet’s office.”
3. Overeager.
“I had a student so excited to drive that when he open the door to get in he hit himself in the forehead with the door and cut himself so bad I had to drive him to the hospital to get stitches.”
4. A lot of stories.
“I taught mostly foreign students studying in the US. I have lots of stories.
The first is about the mid 30’s woman from Bangladesh. We are driving around a surburban neighborhood getting acclimated to making 90 degree turns. Pretty low key not scary stuff. Her phone rings so she stops in the middle of the road to reach her purse in the back seat to answer her call. I informed her she must first pull to the side of the road as you cannot just stop in the middle of the street. She told me I could not tell her what to do.
The second one was a woman in her late 20’s from Saudi Arabi. She was graduating college in 3 weeks and wanted to go home with a DL as women could not drive in her country. I go to pick her up and I ask the standard, ” Have you ever driven before”. She replied she knew what she was doing. 3 minutes in I ask her again because she was performing like this was her first time behind the wheel.
She then stated that she had watched her family driver many times from her vantage point in the back seat. I made her pull over and I drove her to an empty parking lot. She was just not getting it after about 4 actual hours in the car with me on multiple days but she insisted I take her to the licensing bureau for her driving test. I had no choice but to take her even though I knew she would fail.
They call her name and off she goes with the testing person. 7 minutes later the tester walks through the door and straight up to me. She said the woman had about taken out a school bus and that she (the tester) had to grab the wheel to keep them out of the ditch. I was asked for advance warning if I ever returned with such a bad driver.”
5. A terrifying one.
“The most terrifying one I’ve heard of was from a colleague. Like me he takes drivers out to familiarize them with new routes, procedures etc. In this instance the vehicle was a 38 Ton wagon.
About half way though the training trip, the guy just freezes solid, literally mid sentence. Truck is going around a curve, and they end up on the opposite side of the carriageway, getting dodged by oncoming traffic.
By a miracle, nothing gets hit, and a few seconds later he snaps back awake and veers back over to the correct side of the road. Needless to say, they stop, clean out their underwear, and my buddy takes over.
Turns out he’d had a seizure, and once diagnosed had his truck license revoked. Had no medical history of anything prior to this happening.”
6. Oh, boy.
“I had a coworker driving instructor in south Australia who had trained drivers for thirty years (longer then me) and I asked him what is the worst driver you have ever had, Paul?
Right away he told me but I forget her name. She was a little Asian woman who was very nice but would get transfixed behind the wheel. She never spoke just nodded and never seemed to take anything in or change her bad habits. She had over 50 driving lessons before Paul gave up on her. He said one time she ran someone over.
I asked what happened and he said “we were approaching a road works where the guy was standing with the stop sign and cones, and she pulled up and was first in line. She went too close to the guy with the sign and he seemed a little uncomfortable (the car has signs she is learning) so he gave me the thumbs up with a concerned face like “is it alright? I gave him the thumbs up and confident nod “yes it’s fine, don’t worry”.
I explained to her she must pull over slowly to the other side of the road and turn away from the guy and cones. I kept asking her if she understood and she would nod. Eventually the man turned his sign around and she floored it straight at him. He fell on the hood and grabbed the windscreen wipers. He was screaming and I was screaming at her while applying the passenger brake.
At this point she was staring blankly ahead as if she want there and yet accelerating the car as much as she could, foot to the floor, transfixed. This is a true story. Thankfully I never had someone as bad as that.”
7. Not good.
“I was the only American working for an East Asian software firm.
They’d send over PMs or Devs on business, these guys had licenses in China/Vietnam but usually had never driven or even been to the US before. They need to drive so I’d take them out to practice US driving style. It was horrifying.
Example – they’ve heard right turn on red is ok. So they’d do it at full speed, no stopping or slowing or even looking at cross traffic (which is, seriously, how it’s done in Vietnam).”
8. Police driving instructor.
“I’m a police driving instructor, so I teach new recruits emergency operations of police cars. I don’t have any great stories personally, however when I was at the academy as a guest instructor once, I witnessed something pretty crazy.
It was the first day that the recruits were going to run at high speeds with lights and sirens. The way that it works is that an instructor is always in the car with the recruits. I watched as a car driven by a recruit made the turn onto the beginning of the course. The lights and siren came on and the car accelerated down the road.
At the end of this road there is a stop sign at a T-intersection, and on the other side of the intersection is some grass and then the forest. You’re supposed to stop, clear the intersection, and turn right. The car kept accelerating toward the intersection longer than what we were used to seeing, but I thought maybe this was just a particularly aggressive recruit. Most of them are more timid on the first few runs.
However the car was way past where they normally start slowing down, and looked like it was going to blow through the intersection, when suddenly we see the car veer to the right and spin out into the grass. We then see the instructor and the recruit get out of the car and the instructor is yelling and cussing at the recruit. They switch seats and come driving back to the staging area.
The instructor gets out and meets with the head instructor. He explains that as they approached the intersection and he began to realize that the recruit was not stopping he looked over and saw that the recruit had a glazed over look on his face, kind of like a 1,000 yard stare.
He started yelling at the recruit to stop, but the recruit was not reacting at all. Realizing they were about to run through the intersection and go into the woods, he grabbed the wheel from the recruit, and put them into a spin.
When he asked the recruit what the hell happened, the recruit said “sometimes, when I get stressed, I kind of halfway black out.” That was the end of the recruit’s law enforcement journey, as that trait is not very compatible with the career.”
9. This is crazy.
“I swear I’m not making this up.
My drivers ed teacher would take us down country roads on purpose, and not just because there was less traffic. She thought that the only way you could learn to protect a human life was by deliberately taking the life of an animal.
If she saw an animal in the road, she’d say, “Pretend there’s a human in your lane!” and she’d grab the wheel and swerve to hit the animal, if necessary.
This was horrifying, and when other students heard which instructor you’d gotten they’d ask which animal she made you kill. Mine was an opossum.
My best friend had to kill a squirrel. It was the first and only time I’ve hit and killed an animal while driving and I’ve been on the road for 20 years.”
10. Did I pass?
“I know a guy who used to give the final exams for people contesting suspensions of their drivers license with the DMV. He had horror stories to tell me about how bad drivers were.
He had multiple stories about students not even making it out of the parking lot before failing and losing their licenses permanently. But the best was when a woman was backing out of the parking space took quickly and hit a car behind her.
He turns to the driver, and tells her to park back in the space, she guns it and hits the DMV building itself! She then turns to him and asks “Did I pass?”. He said it was the shortest test of his career.”
What’s the craziest thing that you’ve ever seen out on the road?
Share your stories with us in the comments.
We’d love to hear from you!
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