15 Times Driving School Pushed People to Their Limit

Learning to drive is a valuable life skill, but it’s also a real-life comedy, especially when it’s your first time behind the wheel. From pedal mix-ups to clutch disasters and seasoned mistakes, there’s a story here for everyone. These behind-the-wheel mishaps showed us what endurance really looks like. So if you’ve had a recent driving school setback, keep reading. You’re definitely not alone.

• I learned to drive in an old car with no working wipers. The second and third gear got engaged only when they felt like it, and there was no learner’s sign at all. That’s when I truly understood what autopilot meant: you just hit the gas and go in first gear.
  The instructor handled the clutch himself, tried to jam it into the second gear, braked for potholes, and somehow managed to wipe snow off the windshield with a rag while leaning out the window. © mikhail977

• The driving instructor said to my wife after another driving lesson at the driving school, “Well, you know the rules, and you can drive the car quite decently. And if there was no one on the city roads, except for you, I would be completely sure you’d be fine.” © Unknown author / Pikabu

• Biggest mistake was a week before my driving test — trying to pull away from a give way line. Somehow burnt my instructor’s new car’s clutch as I kept revving but the car wasn’t moving. Realised I was in second gear with the handbrake still up. © asrapg / Reddit

• I went for the hand brake instead of the gear stick on a 50mph road. My instructor instantly grabbed my hand and said, “oh no, you don’t do that.” © shankly1985 / Reddit

• In my driver’s ed car, we were on some back roads and had a girl go through 3 consecutive stop signs. My instructor turned to her after the first one, and said, “Did you not see that stop sign?” She said she panicked.
  Then after the next 2, he had her pull over. Then he turned to her and says, “This has been the scariest day of my life.” She immediately started crying. © marti810 / Reddit

• When I was taking my driving lessons, I was rear ended right as we had left the DMV. The instructor got out to speak to the people who had hit me, it was a girl who just passed her driving test and was distracted looking at her license. © WazzaMatta92 / Reddit

• I did my test quite a few years ago in an old Volvo. It had wind up windows and the heater had a propensity to stick on full blast. On the test day, the heat did it’s thing and the car was like a sauna. The tester had beads of sweat rolling down the sides of his face within seconds, he went to wind down the window and the handle came off in his hands. It was downhill from there on. © Glittering-Star966 / Reddit

• I got into the car before him and I sneezed and needed to grab a tissue from the box on the floor behind the passenger seat. I leaned to get it and he got in, butt first, and sat on my head. He was a heavy man as well. My poor head was squashed. I don’t think it would have mattered how many errors I made that day, he would have passed me out of pure embarrassment from sitting on a young girls head. © Tayto_Sandwich / Reddit

• I recently started learning to drive, and it turned out to be a stressful experience for me. Another intersection, the instructor tells me to turn round at the nearest allowed place. I don’t get it right. He hits the brake, “What’s the line here?!”
  “Straight...,” I mumbled. “It’s a solid line.” “But it’s still a straight line,” I stubbornly said. The instructor put his head down on the panel and grew silent, as if accepting his fate. © Overheard / Ideer

• I was the student. So, I took driver’s ed at my school. This is common where I’m from, and it is a small school, 200 kids max. Now, due to reasons, I was late in driving with my teacher and getting my license.
  One day we were minding our business driving around town, and I was going too slow for his liking. He finally looks at me and goes, “Is your foot broken or what?” I had just gotten out of my cast a few weeks ago. Thanks to that, he just called me grandma with how slow I would drive. © BibbityBobbity***** / Reddit

• I was driving to a nearby gas station with my dad, one of my first times driving. I drove perfectly the entire way there and my dad was super impressed. As I was parking, I put my foot on the brake to stop the car and pressed way too hard — except it wasn’t the brake, it was the gas!
  I almost crashed the car into the building, my dad had to do the emergency break to stop us. The car stopped 2 inches from the building. © Unknown author / Reddit

• My sister took me out for my first driving lesson. We used to have a road that was very up and down and curvy... It’s since been developed into a thriving community.
  However, on that fateful day, she took me right to the point of where it began, and had me take over. I carefully drove through the couple of miles of roller coaster like action at the recommended 35 miles per hour.
  After we finished, she had me pull over and said, “Now, this is how you drive this road.” Well... She got going a little too fast and at one point we literally left the ground. Mind you, I’m 15 at the time...
  Anyways, as we left the ground up ahead there’s a turn coming up, so I started screaming as the nose of the car begins to come down, and I hear a small scraping sound... She did slow down but damn... Crazy, crazy. I could have died that day. © FuzzyFireheart316 / Reddit

• I knew I’d failed when I took a turn much too fast and too early, so I essentially swung out into the other side of the road. I’ve never done that in a lesson before so I have no idea what happened. But because I made that mistake, I was suddenly super tense and hyperaware of everything I was doing and I ended up making several more mistakes- I forgot to indicate at one point and at another point indicated too early, I almost didn’t stop at a roundabout (again, not a mistake I’ve ever made before), and didn’t check my mirrors enough. The mirrors thing was especially upsetting because I’ve been trying to make a point of moving my head rather than glancing when I check them to show I’m actually doing it, and I thought I’d done it enough but clearly not. © faerieW15B / Reddit

• I was in the car with the instructor and some other students. A girl was driving. At some point, she panicked... and covered her face with her hands. The car went off the road into a ditch.
  The instructor told her, “Drive us back!” She crossed her arms and said no. Then the guy in the back suddenly yelled, “Let me out, I don’t want to die today.” The instructor made her drive all the way back to school. © Hawthorne_northside / Reddit

• A former driving teacher told us a story about a girl, first time driving, who flipped the car on its back during the road practice with another student in the car. The girl was driving, and another student was in the back seat. The car was on a low-rise bridge, and she hit the guardrail and the car came crashing down and landed on its back.
  The first thing my driver instructor heard immediately after the crash was the kid in the back saying, “Well, I guess I’m not driving today.” © PM_ME_YOUR_SNAPPLE / Reddit

And here are some defensive driving secrets that motorists could benefit knowing.