Driving Me Crazy

For some reason, I had to take the written driver's test this year to get my license renewed. This is somewhat ludicrous since I haven't driven more than twice since the last Unfortunate Incident which was Not My Fault.

I can't remember when I took this test last. I'm thinking it's likely when I first got my driver's license, back in 1971. Can that be? At any rate, I downloaded the California Driver Handbook to read up just in case they changed things much in the last thirty-six years.

The first thing I noticed was a picture of the Govenator. I want to know why Arnie's picture looks like this when my last picture is so bad it regularly burns a hole in my wallet.

Not.

Fair.

Maybe he had a makeup artist and a professional photographer taking the shot instead of an irritated civil service worker? What do you think? Right. That's why I put lipstick on and tried to play nice with the lady for the inevitable yukky shot.

So anyway . . . while reading the booklet, I came some things that are really helpful no matter what state you live in that I'd like to share with all of you.

Remember that a train cannot stop quickly or swerve out of the way.

Good to know, right? Especially the swerve part. Here's another:

Never pass on the left if the driver is signaling a left turn.

Sage advice indeed! And some more:

Enter traffic only when it is safe.

Which is one I shouldn't laugh at because I've seen plenty of people NOT do that.

Never leave your car until you have stopped the engine and set the parking brake.

I have to say in summers past that when garage sale-ing up at Loon Lake the passengers have been known to leave a moving car. This is on account of my DH's family being highly competitive and wanting to get first dibs on any items of value.

In reference to turn-signals:

Signals may be given by hand-and-arm positions

In L.A. an arm hanging out of a window and making gestures could be easily misunderstood. I'm also not sure of how many people who grew up post Model-T even know what the symbols mean. Best to use turn indicators, IMHO.

And did you know that we no longer measure distance in car-lengths? Instead, people are to count seconds from when the car in front of them passes some guidepost and then when they pass the same thing. Cars are to be at least three-seconds apart. Hey, as someone who does time for a living I would be all for this except that it's a really stupid idea. Most people can't get close to counting a real second. Plus, that's very distracting. Can you see everyone on the freeway on their cell phones counting seconds at the same time? Not going to happen.

Probably because of all this studying up, I got 100% on my test. I even got the icy road questions right. Coming from SoCal (where there's never an icy road), I'm very pleased about that. Even better, my photo might look okay this time.