Driving and manuverbility

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We had a foreign exchange student from Germany visit us for about a year. In Germany, the cost of getting a drivers license is measured in thousands of dollars. So she desired to get a license in the States and we accommodated her. In preparing her for the test, I gathered up several 5 gallon plastic pails and placed them one onto another and let her practice parallel parking on an empty school parking lot.

It was good practice because she could hit the plastic buckets as many times as she wished without damaging the car or the buckets. They also made a loud noise when she banged into one and it fell down to the ground. After 5 or 6 tries she got the hang of it.

Another tool that I found useful when I was just a beginner was to mount a couple devices on the right side of the car near the wheel wells. I am not sure what they are called. [Off to Amazon for a second. That didn't work. On to Google, did a search, they are called Curb Feelers or Curb Finders].

[Curb feelers or curb finders are springs or wires installed on a vehicle which act as "whiskers" to alert drivers when they are at the right distance from the curb while parking.

The devices are fitted low on the body, close to the wheels. As the vehicle approaches the curb, the protruding feelers scrape against the curb, making a noise and alerting the driver in time to avoid damaging the wheels or hubcaps. The feelers are manufactured to be flexible and do not break easily.]

Now this is ""Old School"". And they do work well in preventing scraping a car against the curb, especially if you remember to keep your windows open. This link shows you what they look like. Chrome Curb Feeler

I'm in Ohio. I can't want for self driving cars and there are no Taxi's where I live.

I also don't have to worry about cones or markers because I can't get a car until after I get my licence and I have to pay to practice. My mom won't let me practice in her car and I don't have any friends that would let me practice with their's. The people who run the driving practices never understood that either.

I think that they do understand that, quite well. They are not in the business of accommodating individuals with problems, they are there to make sure all drivers have found a way to get sufficient practice. This is a matter of public safety, including your own. If you don't expect to have the resources to drive a great deal, there is no point in learning at all. Your friends and family may be thinking that they'd rather drive you around than take a chance on your driving.

Frankly, I am appalled at some of the thinking in this thread. If you die on the road, you die in real life - no resets. You can cheat on many things, but this is not one. An artist I knew got a job as a Taxi driver, and thought he should look like a Taxi driver by driving fast. However, he didn't look where a Taxi driver looks, and wrecked the car on his first shift.

My mother just thinks autistic people "can't drive". She had no problem letting her other kids drive and has no problem with her NT grand kids driving. Plus, if I'm able to drive, I can escape from her. She doesn't like that. I've told the driving instructors I CAN'T practice any other way and they don't believe me. Seems like they would like that since it means more money for them.

Unfortunately in the US, you only need to do the minimum to pass the test so it's not really cheating to wait until the roads are not bad and the weather to do the driving test. In Oregon, reading the DMV manual is pointless because lot of the questions in the written are just based on common sense than the rules of the road. In Montana, the questions on the test were from the book and all you had to do was study.

Because of the minimum requirements is the reason why we have so many bad drivers in the US. Even people from Europe who got their driving license here after they move to the US, were shocked at how easy it is to get a driver's license here and the driving test is just them taking you around the block and they are like "this is it? I barely did anything."

In New York City, a prospective driver must know how to:

1. Make a U-turn

2. Parallel park


They must also not sit in the driver's seat until the tester directs the prospective driver to go to the driver's seat. The prospective driver must also obey all traffic signs and signals, and be able to adjust the mirrors.

^^3 I lived independently for decades by using a bicycle. It is also good practice for driving if you ride well. People think that they need a car because of where they live, but that's based on what you see from a car. A bike lets you do a much finer-grained search, so you can find housing, work, and shops within a manageable distance. And, if it turns out you can't drive, you don't have any other liability problems.

^^2 Any kind of strategy is cheating. When my appointment came up, the roads were covered in a recent freezing rain. I got my chauffeur's license on the first try (half were routinely failed for operator's licenses) at age 16 plus 2 weeks to pretend I needed more practice. I had been driving a bicycle in traffic, plus farm machinery and a car off-road.

The world has been built for the convenience of drivers in order to sell us more cars, but that does not give us the right to drive them. For that, we need to show actual ability. This is not something that can be glossed over safely like many other tests. The varied requirements reflect local conditions, budgets, and degrees of corruption.

A tricycle may be more practical for some than a bicycle.

Unfortunately car companies has made US cities rip out their trams so they can make money selling cars. Now here you practically need a car to live or else you are stuck at home and very limited and a burden to everyone around you. Also the fact lot of places are not built for bikes so it's unsafe to ride on the side of the freeway or road, no sidewalks, lot of bus systems are unreliable.

In EU, you don't need a car and you can easily travel to other places and train tickets are cheap I hear and they have reliable transportation. I noticed how narrow their roads are in the UK and it was practically not built for cars and it seems more inconvenient to drive in cities than it is to walk. Lack of parking and then they charge you to park at shopping centers. Makes us Americans look spoiled. We went to Paris and it was very crowded you are better off taking the underground.

In my area, you don't really need a car but you do when you have kids or for work depending on your job. Our town has built bike paths and installed more sidewalks to encourage walking and biking and they have lot of buses and have installed more light rails and plan to put in more in the future. They have already built a new train line and they opened it I think 5 years ago. They were working on it in 2012 when we moved our of our apartment. They had to rip out buildings and Trimet bought them or the city I think so they could put in their light rail and expand the road. I commute to work and now we have these scooters now you unlock with your phone with the app. The only thing that sucks is, your phone must have battery life for you to end your ride or else you will keep being charged so you better not run out of battery. My town is all green and encourages biking and commuting so they made their city like that by redoing the roads and putting in more sidewalks and lightrails and having more bus systems.

I can't ride a bicycle in the streets of NYC.

There have been quite a few deaths caused by car-bicycle encounters recently.

I can't ride a bicycle either. I just fall off. And even if I could, there's no where for me to ride said bicycle to in this little hick town.

Riding bicycles can be very problematic. I thought I might get some exercise by riding a bicycle to work each day. After all it was only a mile or two to work. But in many places there were no sidewalks and you had to ride at the edge of the roadway. There were dozens of times a car would go whizzing by inches from my handle bars at 60 miles per hour and then the occupants would scream out obscenities and then honk their loud horn just as they passed . You had to have nerves of steel to keep from jerking and becoming an accident statistic. [definitely sensory overload for an Aspie]

Another major problem is dogs. They are drawn to the wheels of a bicycle and love to nip at the legs of someone riding down a street.

On top of that many individuals live 30 miles for where they work. Riding 30 miles each way to and from work is very prohibitive. The nearest city where I shop is 30 miles away. There is no way I would ride a bicycle 30 miles to buy a weeks worth of groceries and then try and cart that home with me. In the States, the system of transportation generally is not bicycle friendly.

One of my co-workers would ride his bicycle during lunchtime for the exercise. He was in excellent physical shape and all the girls in the office would swoon over him. But one day during lunch a large truck hit him. He was rushed to the hospital. His brain swelled and he died two days later. They took no action against the truck driver. Bicycle riding is not a viable option.

When you live outside major cities, other forms of transportation are not available. There is no bus service in my little town. There is not train service in my little town. There was a train station in the town a hundred years ago, but that has long since closed. We have no taxi service. The only form of transportation that makes any sense at all is the automobile.

Decades ago, the population in the States were spread out evenly. Most individuals worked on farms. But the demographics has shifted so that most people live and work in big cities. [In 1800 in the U.S., 94 percent lived in rural areas. By 1900, the rural population dropped to 60 percent. Today is is down below 25%.] So in general outside these large cities, alternate means of transportation are rather restricted.

There are roads I'd never ride, and many that should only be ridden after considerable practice, but statistically, bicycles are as safe as cars on the road, and they improve your overall health. They are my best anti-depressant. However, just because children ride bicycles does not mean that they are easy. To use one for commuting in traffic takes more skill than driving, but this can be learned by starting on the easy routes, even if they are longer. Where there are few bicycles, the bike lanes tend to end abruptly and have other problems for serious use.
My helmet is un-dinged, but I consider it essential because my rear-view mirror is attached, and that makes a HUGE difference in traffic. I feel like part of the flow, instead of like a sitting duck.
You only get a 30 mile commute if you use motors - searching for home, work, and shops by bike will turn up places where all three are within easy range. I had a friend who owned a house in Ottawa mortgage-free by age 29 because he had never owned a car.

The driving test in my state is a complete joke. I didn't even have to parallel park. I'm still trying to teach myself how to do that correctly, three years after getting my license.