Courtjester
The Town Drunk
So our 19 year old has really not wanted to get her DL, I think a lot of it centers around she has anxiety around driving because she has known 3 kids who have died in the past few years in accidents. One of them passed away driving to school and was a pretty close friend with my daughter.
She has had her permit for some time and we have been working with her driving as much as we can. We have stepped things up recently because driving her to work four days a week and then college twice a week is a little hard on my wife and I. However, we have tired not to push, because that is a parent's worst nightmare to get that call if she got in an accident. She has more than enough money saved to pay cash for a car.
We felt pretty confident today that she would pass, but unfortunately, she failed. I get the main reason why, but the remainder of the deductions really confused my wife and I.
When I learned to drive it was 10 and 2 for the hands. Now it is 10 and 2, but when you turn, you can't let the steering wheel slide in your hands. You have to do some cross over, hand thing, so that two hands are on the wheel at the same time. Literally turning right, your right hand goes over the left hand and the left hand stays on the wheel to complete the turn. I tried it driving tonight and I almost went into the curb. I also learned to always look over your shoulder when making a lane change etc, but she got marked down because she looked when she made the change, but didn't follow up with another look when the change was completed. All over Colorado Springs, especially downtown, they converted some of the two lane roads to one lane roads and made bike lanes out of the other one. For years, the law was you couldn't drive in those lanes, but apparently the law changed in the last year and now they are to be treated as turn lanes. She got marked down for that because she didn't go into the bike lane to complete a right hand turn.
Now the bad, there is a thing called a shared lane. (I didn't know that is what they are called) So if you are approaching an intersection on a smaller traveled streets where this is no designated turn lane, there is that lane that runs down the middle that you pull into when you want to turn left with dashed yellow lines. My daughter screwed up and didn't get all the way into the lane and so there was a car behind her that was not able to get around her. Frustrating I am sure for them, I get it. My daughter tried to get out their way and was going to go and complete her turn. There was a car coming the opposite way and the instructor had to hit the brake, which is an auto fail. We are thankful she was safe and didn't get in an accident, but the explanation we got is you are not allowed to travel at all in a shared lane. You must immediately go in this lane and then turn.
The frustrating thing is the instructor said she did excellent and didn't get enough points against her to fail, but because of the brake, that was an auto fail. I have been driving for 40 years and have never lost a point off my license, but I feel I failed her because her mom and I didn't know all these "new" rules. Her crying her eyes out all the way home was about all I could take.
She has had her permit for some time and we have been working with her driving as much as we can. We have stepped things up recently because driving her to work four days a week and then college twice a week is a little hard on my wife and I. However, we have tired not to push, because that is a parent's worst nightmare to get that call if she got in an accident. She has more than enough money saved to pay cash for a car.
We felt pretty confident today that she would pass, but unfortunately, she failed. I get the main reason why, but the remainder of the deductions really confused my wife and I.
When I learned to drive it was 10 and 2 for the hands. Now it is 10 and 2, but when you turn, you can't let the steering wheel slide in your hands. You have to do some cross over, hand thing, so that two hands are on the wheel at the same time. Literally turning right, your right hand goes over the left hand and the left hand stays on the wheel to complete the turn. I tried it driving tonight and I almost went into the curb. I also learned to always look over your shoulder when making a lane change etc, but she got marked down because she looked when she made the change, but didn't follow up with another look when the change was completed. All over Colorado Springs, especially downtown, they converted some of the two lane roads to one lane roads and made bike lanes out of the other one. For years, the law was you couldn't drive in those lanes, but apparently the law changed in the last year and now they are to be treated as turn lanes. She got marked down for that because she didn't go into the bike lane to complete a right hand turn.
Now the bad, there is a thing called a shared lane. (I didn't know that is what they are called) So if you are approaching an intersection on a smaller traveled streets where this is no designated turn lane, there is that lane that runs down the middle that you pull into when you want to turn left with dashed yellow lines. My daughter screwed up and didn't get all the way into the lane and so there was a car behind her that was not able to get around her. Frustrating I am sure for them, I get it. My daughter tried to get out their way and was going to go and complete her turn. There was a car coming the opposite way and the instructor had to hit the brake, which is an auto fail. We are thankful she was safe and didn't get in an accident, but the explanation we got is you are not allowed to travel at all in a shared lane. You must immediately go in this lane and then turn.
The frustrating thing is the instructor said she did excellent and didn't get enough points against her to fail, but because of the brake, that was an auto fail. I have been driving for 40 years and have never lost a point off my license, but I feel I failed her because her mom and I didn't know all these "new" rules. Her crying her eyes out all the way home was about all I could take.
