Remember your first day of learning to drive a car

by **Brent Burns** on Fri Jun 17, 2005 4:20 pm

Sometime during the first week of January in Rochester, NY when there were a lot of snow on the ground and the air was very cold, my dad came to me and said that it was time for me to learn how to drive a car. At that time, I knew my dad drove a Volkswagen Bug (not the modern Bug you have seen on the road, I mean, that Herbie VW Bug) and that car had manual transmission.

I looked out of the window and told him that he was crazy for teaching me how to drive in that kind of weather. He said, "It is a good time as anytime. It is the right time to learn." That did the trick as I learned how to drive that Bug with the stickshift in a week.

What was your experience of learning to drive a car for the first time?

**Sponsor**

by **bste_lax** on Fri Jun 17, 2005 4:35 pm

A white Ford Tarsus in an empty bank parking lot at the end of my street. Kind of boring but I remember being slightly nervous although 2 weeks after getting my license, I was backing out of my garage with my old S-10 Blazer which had a very sticky gas pedal. You really had to push it down to get it moving, so I was backing out and a trash can of random sports equipment had apparently fallen over including a basketball that became wedged behind one of my tires. The novice driver I was kept slowly pushing on my gas pedal to back out into my alley. I thought my gas pedal was being stupid so I pushed more on my gas pedal only to have the ball become un-wedged and me flying in reverse down my driveway into the alley. Just a matter of how I paniced to slam the brakes and how my steering wheel went, I backed perfectly into the alley about 3 inches short of taking out my neighbor's fence and going into their pool. I also managed to take out a portion of my garage door. Good way to start off my driving career.

by **lil lady lax fan** on Fri Jun 17, 2005 5:42 pm

During driver's ed my brother and I had to take a make-up class. Our instructor had left his lunch at home so we drove him back to pick it up (this was at 6 a.m.) I drove there, my brother drove back. How's that for killing two birds with one stone!

All right, time for a 'stupid lady driver' story.

A few weeks after I got my license my mom was taking me over to my boyfriend's house and thought she'd be nice and let me drive. She told me to get in the left lane so I turned on my blinker and merged over two lanes...without looking to make sure the lanes were clear. Needless to say the guy in the lane next to me wasn't too happy about being cut off and honked rather profusely at me as he swung around and passed me! I think that maneuver gave my mother a nice set of grey hairs as well. Can't wait to see what my daughters have in store for me... :lol:

by **Brent Burns** on Fri Jun 17, 2005 8:51 pm

lil lady lax fan wrote: Can't wait to see what my daughters have in store for me...

Oy, vey! I am not looking forward to doing that with my 16-year old daughter. :shock:

by **lil lady lax fan** on Fri Jun 17, 2005 9:55 pm

My favorite driver's ed story was the one about the girl who went out on the freeway for the first time. The teacher told her to pass the car in front of her so she put the car in P for pass... I'll leave the rest up to your imagination! :lol:

by **UofMLaxGoalie11** on Sat Jun 18, 2005 3:44 pm

my first experiences driving involved the typical empty parking lot when there isnt a single car in there. however, the more interesting was when i learned to drive a stick the first time. and the second time. and the third time. it was a saturday morning and my dad took me out to teach me how to drive my sisters manual in case i ever need to drive it for some reason. i would always rev it up really high then let the clutch out too soon and stall it. about 15 times. i just couldnt get the timing down between giving gas and letting out on clutch. so thats pretty much how the first time went. then when i was helping my sister move out of her apartment, she asked me to move her car to the front door so we could put some stuff in. once again i spent about 15 minutes trying to get it about 50 feet. i eventually got it within 10 feet of where it needed to be and i quit. and by quit i mean stalled it. then with my third incident i had just finished changing the oil on her car so i backed it off the ramps and was going to pull it up into the third stall area. so im backing up going downhill and starting to turn. i didnt let out on the cluth fast enough so i was just rolling back. in a split second i realized that our van was parked right where i was rolling to so i slammed on the breaks, leaving about 2 inches between the vehicles. unfortunately my sisters parking break didnt work so if i were to get out to let someone else pull it forward, it would roll back and hit the van. so my brother pulled the van out into the street and had me pull the car forward. i managed to start forward without rolling back at all, so i could have done it if i needed. but i didnt want to spend the money to repair the van if i didnt.

by **TexOle** on Sat Jun 18, 2005 11:10 pm

There are usually some great stories about people training to drive 15 passenger vans at Olaf. In fact watching most people learn how to drive a van is funny. I drove a Suburban for some time so they were no problem for me. My brother never really took drivers ed. It showed when he was parking the Suburban in LH parking lot one morning. He was told to keep it away from most busy areas. He got to the end where everyone parks. It was chained off. He begins to back up and hits a curb. He thought he hit a car so he went for the brake, but instead got the gas. The Suburban got airborn and flattened a car while damaging a couple of others.

by **Campbell** on Mon Jun 20, 2005 2:12 pm

I also learned on an old bug Brent. We had a '74 super beetle and sometime in the early 80s after my parents drove it from Monterey, CA to Annapolis, MD and the thing never ran right again. So, my first experiences driving were with popping the clutch. I can remember many times my dad pushing that bug out of a parking lot yelling, ok now. I feel like after learning to drive an old bug you can drive just about anything, even tractors seem easier.

I worked with a guy from Kansas that used to drive a 5-ton grain truck to the elevator all the time. He was only 9 and couldnt reach the pedals so he had to stand up the whole time. I always thought that was pretty funny.