How many times did it take you to pass your driving test?

Raconteuse

Six. Terrible I know.

EmmetSpiceland

1. But I shouldn’t have passed.

Junkyard Tom

Passed first time over 20 years ago.


Still learning.

BDI

Once,at the time they stopped all this letting people away with driving on a provisional stuff . Before that I just drove on a provisional .

Once. Think I dropped only one point or something.

Rubberchikken

passed first time.

always disappointed with the quality of road users nowadays.

Purple Mountain

Once. I wore leather hotpants, a boob tube and stilettos, but that had absolutely nothing to do with me being a success.

Your Face

Passed second time.
I wasn't ready the first time if I'm honest.

The_Honeybadger

Passed first time at age 17. Assessor said I did a flawless test but to watch for parked cars opening doors. I will never forget the elation leaving the testing centre, mainly because my older brother who fancied himself as a great driver had failed several times and I had my licence before him. He was like a dog when I got home

Strumms

First time too. 10 years ago. My instructor told me not to show up for the test as I wasn’t ready and didn’t have the required competency yet to pass. I believed he was wrong, it proved I was right.

80sChild

Strumms wrote: »

First time too. 10 years ago. My instructor told me not to show up for the test as I wasn’t ready and didn’t have the required competency yet to pass. I believed he was wrong, it proved I was right.

First time too. Tester so professional and put me at ease. Easier to concentrate without excess anxiety. Great day.

windy shepard henderson

Your Face wrote: »

Passed second time.
I wasn't ready the first time if I'm honest.

Same as this, pissed it the second time

sligojoek

My father bought me a Honda 50 when I was 12. I spent a few years driving it and a few others around a two acre field. When I was 16 and a day I got my licence £6 and insurance £132. I eventually did the test at 29 on a 1978 Kawasaki z1000.

I passed the car test at 21 in England. No driving on your 5th provisional over there.

andekwarhola

Passed it second time but to be fair, chanced my arm doing first test with a few weeks driving experience and about 3 lessons and quite rightly failed.

Lewis_Benson

One.

andekwarhola

Anybody else just quickly skipping over the wanky first time look at me posts?

sligojoek

My daughter 24 passed hers a few weeks ago at the first attempt. She wanted to wait till college was out of the way.

Last week was the first week she's driven to and from work on her own.

OMG so proud of my beautiful daughter .

Fann Linn

Failed first time in Irl.
Passed first time in UK almost 40 years ago.

highdef

1

Potential-Monke

Passed first time too. Got in a bit before the mandatory driving lessons thing. Dropped 1 point on not putting on my hazards at a construction stop. The entire place was lit up with flashing orange lights, didn't think I needed to put mine on too. Ah well.

Deleted User wrote: »

I actually posted this over ten years ago on boards. Anyone know what way that works? Why do some green ones have marks?

IIRC, the greens ones are advisories, so you could have something like 10 of them to fail. Only a few of the next blue was a fail, and a red was an immediate fail.

yerwanthere123

Passed the third time. Failed first time when I blatantly wasn't ready, failed the second time for someone that was at the very worst a grade 2 fault but the guy was a notorious cnut so chose to fail me. The same guy tested and passed me the third time, much to his very obvious disappointment that he didn't even try to hide. Didn't even tell me I'd passed or say congratulations, just slid the certificate of competency across the table and told me to sign it. Nice fella :pac:

fritzelly

Passed first time, thought I failed when he said take the next right and went to turn in to a cemetery (suppose technically I wasn't wrong but didn't think that at the time)
So delighted wanted to driver home but instructor wouldn't let me - pumped with adrenaline and endorphins

sligojoek

yerwanthere123 wrote: »

Passed the third time. Failed first time when I blatantly wasn't ready, failed the second time for someone that was at the very worst a grade 2 fault but the guy was a notorious cnut so chose to fail me. The same guy tested and passed me the third time, much to his very obvious disappointment that he didn't even try to hide. Didn't even tell me I'd passed or say congratulations, just slid the certificate of competency across the table and told me to sign it. Nice fella :pac:

Was that in Nenagh?

endacl

First time pass. Had my mind on other things, so I was in the frame of mind where I was just taking the tester for a spin, and doing what he told me.

No big deal. ‘Turn left here. Go up there. etc.’

dark crystal

Passed first time.

grazer

First time. Aged 23.

Pranged my car two weeks later, pulling into a parking space too fast, still on a high from being a “real” driver. Not a bump in the 25 years since. Well, not my bump; car written off while parked outside my house!

JupiterKid

Twice...failed first time, passed second time. Nearly 20 years ago now.

I actually think everyone should have to re-sit their driving test every decade. There are so many bad drivers on the roads you wonder how they could possibly have passed.

yerwanthere123

sligojoek wrote: »

Was that in Nenagh?

No, Killarney.

Wompa1

In Ireland, I got it on my 3rd try. My first fail was harsh. Second was fair.

In the US, passed the first time.

sligojoek

yerwanthere123 wrote: »

No, Killarney.

There was a legendry tester in Nenagh years ago. Same guy who passed me on the bike.

If there was a crack in your indicator lens you'd be sent home.

GrumpyMe

Twice and once - different categories

King of Kings

6 times.
Felt 2 of the fails were better than the pass

corner of hells

Raconteuse wrote: »

Six. Terrible I know.

Maybe you just like doing driving tests.
Three fails myself, passed on the fourth go.

Huntergonzo

Passed on the first go, but I was lucky because I did no research as to where the test centre even was, I just turned up at the ISM which luckily happened to be beside the RSA test centre, arrived in the door just as my name was called out.

Done the test, passed it, had the rocky theme song on CD waiting to go to celebrate my victory, drove to work (a river in the middle of nowhere, I used to make maps) and swiftly locked my keys in the boot.

.....a very successful day out :-)

Wibbs

Failed first time. I was going to just do the test, but my dad reckoned at least one official lesson would stand to me in case of me not doing stuff that was expected in the test(I did find out that doing heel and toe while downshifting raised eyebrows. That's how my dad did it so just grew up with that). So took a lesson with an instructor who was a bit of a nervous nellie and who insisted I'd have a better chance of passing in his car. I didn't. So reapplied almost immediately and passed a month or so later in my own car.

JupiterKid wrote: »

I actually think everyone should have to re-sit their driving test every decade. There are so many bad drivers on the roads you wonder how they could possibly have passed.

+1000.

mikemac2

B - twice

A - first time

The motorcycle one got paused halfway through as we passed some roadworks with jackhammers blasting away. I couldn’t hear the tester in the headset, he was following me in the car. I had no idea which direction to take so just drove somewhere quiet to await further instructions. The tester understood, all good and I passed:)

LirW

My husband passed at 3rd time. Should have been second but he switched his brain off 5 seconds too early and when parking in the carpark of the test center at the end of the second attempt, he had a massive brainfart, didn't break properly and tipped the wall by letting the car roll into it.
He would have passed otherwise.

I Am The Law

andekwarhola wrote: »

Anybody else just quickly skipping over the wanky first time look at me posts?

Car first time @ 18
Bike first time @ 30

Begrudgary is alive and well in Ireland.

ebbsy

First time.

But I drove around on a provisional for 12 years before I did it.

What an idiot I was.

Pac1Man

Pac1Man = Passed on 2nd attempt.

F1 Champ Jenson Button = Passed on 2nd attempt.

∴ Pac1Man = F1 Champ Jenson Button.

Acquiescence

First time with one grade 2 fault.

I'd happily pay to resit my test at 3-5 year intervals if every other idiot on the road had to aswell.

The overall standard of driving in this country is disgraceful.

Macdarack

Passed mine 1st time . the day of the test I got a lesson off a chap who used to give lessons, had a quick look of the rules of the road and borrowed a car cause mine was a wreck and had no tax. I didn't know I'd be doing the test that morning because my provisional licence was out of date but my mother picked up a new one I forgot I ordered. Miracle i passed, I'll never forget it.

Wanderer78

First, not a hope I'd get through it now

SuperS54

Passed it first time, just as well as I was emigrating 2 days later, that was 19 years ago.

Passed it first time, though I was truly a hazard on the road. It was all about clutch control, gear change, the stupidly monikered 3-point turn. Passed test without having a clue about roundabouts and roadcraft. I had first learned to fly an airplane-there were quite a few pilots atthr club who hadn’t learned to drive as you could afford one or the other. It half shocked me that s car was so different to an airplane where you steer with your feet and control throttle with hand. And roughly speaking the aim In the plane was to get faster to get safer, which is sort of opposite to driving where speed limits are in operation.

Nowadays there is less need to drive s clutched car as they will be obsolete in the future. A good safe hybrid is the way to go for a learner. A second-hand model would be suitable. My own car has a camera which reads the situation ahead and applies brakes in a situation where the driver is too late in reaction. It reads road signs and lets you know the speed limit if you hadn’t observed it yourself.

Years before I learned to drive my father had me changing the wheels about in his old Ford Consul/Grenada, spraying the leads, checking and changing oil, adjusting spark plugs, so I knew exactly how to keep my first car (a Metro)going well when I got it. Never ever failed to start in the coldest weather when the other cars on the road were paralysed. My Dad had kept his going like that too, and would get the neighbour's car going for him if it hiccuped.

Wibbs

Deleted User wrote: »

Nowadays there is less need to drive s clutched car as they will be obsolete in the future. A good safe hybrid is the way to go for a learner. A second-hand model would be suitable. My own car has a camera which reads the situation ahead and applies brakes in a situation where the driver is too late in reaction. It reads road signs and lets you know the speed limit if you hadn’t observed it yourself.

I'd agree re the manual gearbox, but there's no such thing as a "safe hybrid", or any car for that matter, though too damned many people seem to believe this to some degree. Too many think because their car has a high NCAP rating, more airbags than Dail Eireann, late braking sensors and the like that they can almost absolve themselves of personal attention to the road and road conditions and it gives them a false sense of security. If it's a huge 4X4 add extra daft points. I see this on a scarily regular basis on the roads where people are going hell for leather in their mobile gin palace tech boxes oblivious to road conditions. If someone is relying on their car to read road signs for speed limits I dunno what to think TBH. Do these things help reduce some muppetry on the roads from the dopey? Sure and that's a good thing, but I would prefer to remove the dopey from the roads in the first place.

Trigger Happy

I took two attempts pass my car driving test and one for the motorbike. Would not be wanting to do either ever again.
I had to do another test in the US when I lived there to get my US driving permit.

Strumms

Acquiescence wrote: »

I'd happily pay to resit my test at 3-5 year intervals if every other idiot on the road had to aswell.

The overall standard of driving in this country is disgraceful.

I think it would be a good idea but perhaps a logistical nightmare to get enough testers to test both new drivers and recurrent checks on the likes of me and you.

The overall standard IS crap. I don’t blame the lack of recurrent training I blame the lack of enforcement by the Gardai on the roads. .. .

I related what you can expect recently when I was in a car driven by a relative which was pulled and she was given points for the first time in her blemish free 16 year driving career.... car in front goes though a junction after being stopped at a red, THEN decided it didn’t know where it was going, left, right or straight, jammed on and stopped in the middle of a busy junction.. light turns amber then red, we are three quarters way over the line... next blue lights... an attitude from auschwitz, roaring and shouting about road safety.... I inform him that if they had a key concern about road safety he’d be talking to the driver of the car who was the root cause of the problem... who illegally stopped in the middle of the busy junction, might as well have been talking to something behind glass in a fûcking zoo... pig ignorant and hard of thinking is the polite way of putting it and probably putting the state at about €40,000 into the hole for this ‘service’.

Meanwhile ‘Actual’ not up to scratch driving is ignored, obviously defective vehicles with lights not working, bald tyres etc, IGNORED.

threetrees

EmmetSpiceland wrote: »

1. But I shouldn’t have passed.

Me too. I passed first time over 20 years ago and I'm not sure how I managed it but I wasn't arguing!

We really are at a crossroads (get it?) in terms of traditional manual cars and hybrid/electric cars. I'd say there's a good portion of new drivers now with automatic only licences, seeing no need for manuals.

andekwarhola

andekwarhola wrote: »

Anybody else just quickly skipping over the wanky first time look at me posts?

Only you, inadequate second-timer!

I passed first time. My last year in school one of our teachers used to give us lessons in the basics around the school grounds which was a great head start.

Then when I finished secondary I was given a gift of a four day full-time course in Wales with a test on day five. I passed, but I didn't drive unaccompanied for a long time as I might have had the skills to pass, but I didn't have the experience to be safe.

Still waters

Twice in the car
First time in the rigid
First time in the artic