I am teaching a student various driving rules. Eventually, we get to the point of turns with traffic lights, what different lights mean, and when we can turn on red lights. I don’t like to outright give my students the answers, so there’s a lot of leading with questions and drawing a diagram to get them to the answer with their own brainpower.

I won’t recap the whole conversation, but it took quite some time to get this student to understand that you can turn left on a red light if you are turning from a one-way to a one-way.

Me: “And this is the only situation you can turn left on a red light, because it’s the one time a left turn is not crossing over another lane.”

Student: “Oh, so you can only do it once?”

I bought my first car and went to driving school very late. I was nervous, and before the driving lessons, I asked my old friend, who was my age but had already been driving for ten years, to give me a private lesson in his car.

He readily agreed, and we went and found an empty country road where I took the wheel and drove up and down for some hours, just to get the most basic skills, feeling the brakes, clutch, changing gears, etc. My friend was riding shotgun and gently pointed out my mistakes.

After some time, I felt more confident, so I thanked him and asked if there was any general advice he would like to give me before I went to the driving school. He thought deeply for a minute or so.

Friend: “When driving, do not watch the pedals.”

Not what I expected, but trust me, VERY good driving advice!

I’m one of those people who often have trouble telling their left from their right. Sometimes I have no trouble at all, but most of the time when someone directs me to the right I go left, and vice versa, with complete confidence until someone calls me back and sets me straight. I’m a little worried about this when I start taking driving lessons, as I’m a perfectionist and have gotten in trouble because of this “handicap”, but thankfully, my driving instructor has a habit of pointing to where he wants me to go. One day, however…

Driving Instructor: “At the next intersection, I want you to turn left.”

He does not point this time. I just say okay and make the requested turn… or so I think.

Driving Instructor: “Okay, you executed that turn very well, but I told you to go to the left, and you turned right instead.”

I start apologizing profusely and manage to stammer that I can’t always tell left from right. I expect the same telling-off I have gotten in the past from teachers or others for “not paying attention,” but instead, he reassures me.

Driving Instructor: “It’s okay; lots of students have trouble with left and right. The point isn’t getting the directions right but driving safely. You can take a wrong turn anytime, even on the exam, and it won’t be a big deal as long as you don’t panic and try to correct in an unsafe way. Every driver makes mistakes, but as long as you don’t endanger yourself or others making them or trying to correct them, it doesn’t really matter. Okay?”

Me: “Yeah, okay, that makes sense. Thanks.”

Driving Instructor: “No problem. That’s why I’m here. Just make sure to mention it during your exam so they know to point the directions, and remember to stay calm. Now, I think this has given us a nice opportunity to practice U-turns, so pick a spot.”

I mulled that speech over for a while, and it really made me less nervous while driving because I realized I didn’t have to be perfect, just safe. That lesson made its way into other parts of my life, as well, and I became much less of a perfectionist, which made my life quite a bit easier. All because I turned right instead of left. Oh, and I passed my driving exam, too.

I take driver’s ed at a local high school with other teenagers. One is committed to being the class clown, and we all think he is doing pretty well at it. For example, after our teacher stresses that a green traffic light means go WHEN CLEAR, he asks what red means. The class clown calls out, “Stop when clear!”

One day, the classroom phone rings. The class clown is sitting closest and offers to answer it. The teacher obliges.

Class Clown: “Hello, [Teacher]’s room; this is [Class Clown]… Yes, that’s me. Oh, [Teacher] has mentioned me?”

Teacher: “Who is it?”

Class Clown: “Your wife.”

He continues the conversation with the teacher’s wife. The teacher walks over to the phone.

Teacher: “Here, let me have the phone.”

Class Clown: “She said she wants to talk to me.”

The teacher rolls his eyes and grabs the phone.

Teacher: “Right. Hi, honey, I— What? Um, okay.”

He then hands the phone back to the class clown.

Teacher: “She wanted to let me know what she was making for dinner tonight… and now she wants to talk to you again.”

The class clown and the teacher’s wife ended up talking another five or ten minutes. From the side of the conversation we could hear, it sounded like a pleasant one!

When I was in high school, our school offered a driver’s ed course. It was a classroom-only course to learn the rules of the road; there was no practical driving in an actual vehicle. I’m convinced that the teacher they’d chosen for this class hated teenagers. Why he was teaching in a high school, I’ll never know.

On the very first day of class, he told us all that he “believed that no teenager should ever drive a car” and that his own teenage son was forbidden from taking a driver’s ed course until [Teacher] was satisfied with how much he knew about driving. I always wondered how the poor kid was expected to learn enough to satisfy his dad without taking any classes. 

Throughout the class, the teacher would tell us graphic stories about what would happen if we drank and drove, used our phone while driving, or even had the radio on in the car. Here are some of my favorites.

He described getting into a car accident and getting thrown through the windshield because, of course, we aren’t wearing seatbelts. This one included a handout with a graphic play-by-play of the horrific damage done to your body from one moment to the next. 

He described taking a run turn too quickly on a motorcycle, losing control, and crashing into a cornfield. In this particular lovely scenario, both of our legs are broken, so it takes three days to drag ourselves back to the road so anyone can see us to rescue us. I’m not sure how far into this hypothetical cornfield he imagined we’d be thrown.

By the end of the five-week course, half of the fifteen- or sixteen-year-old students in the class that had been so excited about getting a license were now completely terrified of going anywhere near a vehicle. 

This was a fine example of a teacher with no interest in teaching. He didn’t want teenagers to drive, and he certainly got what he wanted. I don’t think a single one of us felt prepared for behind-the-wheel practice after that class.