A Day That Will Live In Driving Test Infamy

Abby had her driving test today.

Wish I had some happy news to reportas she is a quite capable driver, but she didn't make it out of the parking lot.

As reported to me by her and Tash who was there, the testing arrangement stank to high heaven and was not a reflection of reality at all.

First, the examiner had lost her voice and was hard to hear.

So examiner is outside the car, has Abby first start the car and then drive forward, stop where she indicates and then has to back into a spot with small cones bordering it, followed immediately by pulling out and parallel parking at a very weird angle.

Not something you would ever do in real life, and Tash notes the angles were strange, you would not try to back into the spot indicated from that starting position in real life, the cone spots don't match up to the angles for the actual striped parking spots, and the cones very low and hard to see. You also wouldn't immediately try and parallel park from that angle either.

Oh, and you have to do both maneuvers with a total, of 6 wheel movements.

Not reflective of actual driving at all, kinda designed for failure.

I daresay even Murphy's Law or Keads would've had a bit of trouble pulling that off within those parameters, especially when not driving the samll driving test car for the test.

So the examiner fails her on that, but cheerfully notes that she should come back and take a lesson with them for the parking section so she can see how its done at those angles and then take the test right after and oh, she may want to rent their car for the test which is smaller and has a backup camera.

See where this is going?

In other words, administering the driving test is $60, failing her and then "suggesting" a lesson and then another test would net them another $120 so its kinda in their interest to fail them out with this BS setup and collect $180 plus more with the test car rental rather than pass her and only make $60.

Yep, this stinks on ice. She's not happy as she didn't get to demonstrate how well she actually drives nor how she can actually park but instead got hosed inn a made up cone land in a parking lot at an off angle.

We'll have to see if other testing centers are similarly setup or if we have to play the game and pay up in order for her to pass, though I daresay simply requesting a bribe form us of $180 to pass the parking portion of the test would have been both more economically efficient and far more above board than this baloney.