Driving here, there and everywhere

I love to drive. I love sitting in the car, listening to music while the miles just pile up on the odometer. Of course this isn’t something easily reconcilable with my belief that CO2 emissions are ruining our climate and everybody needs to be more conscious of the environment. But driving just gives me such a feeling of freedom. Once you’re behind the wheel you could really go anywhere and do anything, and not many things can afford you that luxury.

I got my licence in 1994 in California after having flunked my test once here in France. At the time I was in high school in a small town in France called Fontenay-le-Comte. It had a total of 19000 inhabitants at the time, and was one of those places where everyone pretty much knew everyone. Or at least that’s what it felt like when you were part of a group of Norwegian high school students and overheard conversations in the market on the weekend or in the café. Amazing how much gossip was banded around about us, most of it false I might add. Anyway, I digress…

I started taking driving lessons here in France after a few introductory lessons kindly given by my dad. Lessons he spent with one hand on the handbreak and partly holding his breath. The theory I passed without any problems, and then there was the actual road test. I admit I was nervous before the test. I told my driving instructor and his advice was to have a couple of drinks before the test to calm my nerves a little. (And that’s not a joke, that was his actual suggestion) Needless to say I didn’t take his advice, but decided to give it a chance stone cold sober, and nervous as can be.

I didn’t do badly at all in my opinion. I parallell parked, I backed up a steep hill, I u-turned, I drove on the freeway and down small country roads and some small crowded streets, and this is where I ran into trouble. This is when I flunked my test after driving for about an hour. I was coming down a small street in the town centre, cars were parked on one side of the street, not on my side I might add, and coming towards me from the opposite direction was another car. It was a tight fit, and I knew we wouldn’t both be able to fit, but because the cars weren’t parked on my side of the street, according to the road rules in France I had the right away, so I decided to drive forward. Needless to say the idiot coming in the opposite direction decided that was the perfect day to ignore what he had once learned in traffic school and started driving too. We met in the middle and instead of immediately backing up so he could pass, I waited for him to back up, and the examiner decided that wasn’t the appropriate behaviour for a young lady just learning to drive or some such drivel. Was I furious? You betcha, and I even pulled out the book with the road rules to prove to the guy that I had the law on my side, but it was no use. I had flunked my test.

A few months later I was going to California to be an au-pair. I would need a licence, so the family I was staying with and working for took me driving to evaluate, and then decided I didn’t need any further lessons, but should just go to the DMV and take the test. The theory was easy. If I recall correctly one of the multiple choice questions asked whether when people were in the middle of the street, you should a) drive, b) honk and then drive or c) wait until the passage was clear of people and then drive. Then came the time for the road test. I wasn’t quite as nervous this time, and instead of the stick shift I was taking the test with an automatic transmission, so that was one less thing to worry about. I was all set for an hour long test which would involve pretty much the same things as I had had to do in France, so you can imagine my surprise when the entire test took about ten minutes, and the most difficult thing I had to do was pull up alongside an empty curb and reverse for a few yards. The whole thing cost me about $20, and when I came back to Norway a year later I just traded it in for a Norwegian licence, thus avoiding the costly and frankly harrowing experience of doing the test in Norway.

I’m not sure why there’s such a huge difference between the driving tests in Europe and the ones in the US. I don’t even know if that’s still the case. I’m also thinking some Americans reading this must be scratching their heads wondering how those crazy French drivers got their licence in the first place considering the driving you may have observed around here. (Especially when you see them manoeuver around the Place Charles de Gaulle Etoile)
I think partly it’s just the difference in attitude to driving. In the US it seems to be considered more as a right than anything else, here it’s still considered a privilege.

I’m certainly happy I have my licence which means I can enjoy the guilty pleasure of driving on empty freeways in the middle of the night down to the Riviera, singing along to a cd or the radio, possibly stopping along the way because I see a sign in the middle of nowhere advertising an alligator farm. And I’ll also be enjoying driving through the desert from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in July (and yes, I promise we’ll get a car with satellite radio this time), just like I enjoyed driving from Las Veags to San Francisco last summer. Now if they could only come up with a car that didn’t pollute, then I could drive all the time without a trace of guilt… oh, and while I’m making requests I’d also like the car to magically make other cars disappear so I’d never be stuck in traffic. And of course it has to be cute. Maybe in a nice bright colour. And if there was any way to install a Diet Coke machine in a car that’d be good too.

(March 8, 2006)