I spent tonight in the offices of a driving school on 23rd and Park… in this room.
In New York, to get your license you must attend a five hour pre-licensing course – no matter if you’ve had a license in another country… or even like some people there, you had a license from another state that you let expire. You still have to do this course and the test. If, after doing the course, you don’t get your license within a year then you have to come back and do it again. I felt like saying “Hellllllooo I have navigated the Great Ocean Road so many times, have shared the road with trams, can do hook turns, the Reservoir Station railway crossing was something I drove through all the time and I could go through the Elizabeth Street roundabout with my eyes closed… I do not need this course!”
I am hoping to do a driving test while I am up in Albany for Easter… just so that it is another thing off my list. You see when you don’t have a car you don’t feel it is important to even have a license!
The course was part lecture/part watching videos from the 80s and 90s. In an online review one person said they had Scott Baio in their videos. No such luck for me!
The first video was ‘The Aftermath’ which was produced in the late 80s by the Manocherian Foundation. Their productions are a lot like this –
The documentary detailed what happened to Olympic medallist Bruce KImball when he was drink driving and smashed into a group of teenagers at high speed. The second video was the ‘National Driving Challenge’ with questions asked by early 90s stars such as Grant Show and MC Hammer.
It was a long night and one thing was for certain… judging by some of answers that they gave in class, I am not super happy knowing that I will (hopefully) soon be driving on the same roads as some of the others in the room. I just wish I had my gorgeous Holden Gemini here to scoot around the city in!!