A licence to drive

I still can't believe it. I laugh to myself and sometimes aloud, out of sheer happiness that I passed my driving test and got my driving licence here. Let me tell you the story.

With a US (or any foreign) driving licence, you can drive in UK for upto a year. If you have a licence from a EU country, you can simply exchange it for a UK one, without needing to take the test. Since we moved here in the end of May 2010, wife and I should get our licenses before end of May. Since we both drive to work and my wife needs to drop off our son to the nursery, not getting it in time will just complicate our lives.

So we started our quest to obtain driving privileges in earnest last July. The first step is to apply for a provisional licence. The next step is to pass the written test, which was a cakewalk. The last step is to take the driving test. We took our time and started with driving lessons in January. After an initial assessment, my driving instructor told me to take 10 1-hour classes before I can take the test. Wife was given the same number from her instructor. That may seem like a lot of lessons for someone who has driven more than ten years in US. Believe me, it is not. To understand that, you need to understand the driving test here and some road rules peculiar to UK.

I vaguely remember my driving test in California in 2000. I didn't have any car driving experience before, but still passed it in my first attempt after taking a few driving lessons. I found the UK one much much tougher. The test is for about 40 minutes and consists of one of four manoeuvres (parallel parking, reversing into a parking spot, three point turn and reverse around a corner), possibly an emergency stop and 10 minutes of independent driving (where you have to follow a series of directions given in advance). 40 minutes itself is a long time for a test, considering you will be just driving around the town and no motorway (highway) driving. One serious mistake or three minor mistakes of the same kind will result in a fail. It is just a long and tough test, that feels like it was designed to make people fail. No wonder the pass rate for the test is just 44%.

Just take one of the manoeuvres - parallel parking. In the US, if you manage to park your car behind another one without hitting a curb, you are fine. Even hitting the curb may not mean you failed. Here, you have to do all these:

• Carefully pull over next to the other car.
• Check your blind spots, your rear and side mirrors and sidewalks around you. If you miss any spot, you fail.
• If you see any car or pedestrian anywhere near you, just wait. If you move, you fail
• Reverse slowly straight back.
• Before you turn into the curb, stop and check your right blindspot. if you don't do this, you fail.
• Now turn into the curb and straighten, without hitting the curb.
• You don't need to park directly behind the other car. You could leave one or two car lengths, but the examiner may not like this.
• At any point during this, if a car or pedestrian shows up on the road, stop and allow them to pass before continuing. If you don't stop, it's a fail.

This just feels a lot, but wife and I mastered all these after few lessons. But we could be plain unlucky and end up on a busy road during the test and fail to stop for someone. For a new driver, this is going to be much harder. Mind you, we haven't even gotten to roundabouts, the cornerstone of UK driving pleasure. For regular turns, you have to follow a MSM (check your Mirrors, Signal, Manoeuvre) routine. For roundabouts, you have to follow a MSPSL (check your Mirrors, Signal, Position the car on the correct lane, adjust Speed, Look for traffic on the roundabout). You should neither be too fast nor should you be too slow and hesitant in the roundabouts. I have to admit that till I started taking the driving lessons, I happily drove for six months without knowing the roundabout rules and getting honked one too many times.

Coming back to my driving test, I failed the first time. I drove confidently, made only a few minor mistakes. But I turned into a road which felt wide and was not sure whether it was the normal 30 mph zone or 40. I drove hesitantly and saw a 40 signboard at some distance and started accelerating to 40. Apparently it was 30 zone and the 40 zone started only after the signboard. So, I failed. Wife took the test a week after. I wasn't sure what to wish for - if she passes, I am going to hear it for the rest of my life. She wasn't very confident before the test, but somehow got her confidence as soon as the test started and passed it making very few minor mistakes. I have been getting valuable driving advice since then and don't think it's going to stop anytime soon.

I had to wait for a month to get another appointment. This time it was on a Saturday at 8.40AM, which is good since the traffic is light. I wasn't very confident, made more minor mistakes. It did not help that the examiner kept leaning and staring at my dash more than five times and then marked something on his sheet. When he had me drive into the test centre in about 32 minutes, which is less than the usual test time, I thought I was done for. Fortunately, I had not done a major mistake and he announced that I passed. Much to my relief.

To round off the story, we hear our insurance premiums are going up BECAUSE we have gotten UK licence. Insurance companies conveniently forget our long foreign driving history once we get a UK licence. We are treated just like any new UK driver. So much for being a better driver.

The new Odyssey

I have been largely silent for the past month. It doesn't help if we take turns falling sick. Our boy first got chicken pox, wife got it a week later and then I got it two days after that. It's kind of surprising that kids and adults get chicken pox in the UK. It is common in India and rare in US. Wife and I both got chicken pox as kids in India, but still we got it here - maybe a different kind of virus here. Anyways, we are all fine now.

I briefly mentioned in one of my posts before that I will be taking up a new job in February. I found a job in Reading. At 17 miles drive from home, which should be much better than the 1.5 hour one way commute to London I was doing before. My initial plan was to take public transportation for the first month or so, see how it goes and maybe then get a car. The public transportation option turned out to be a bad idea - I had a 10 minute walk to the train station, take a 24 minute train to Reading, then take a 15-20 minute bus to the business park where my office is located. My commute ended up being at least one hour each way, which is not terrible by UK standards, but worse than I had anticipated. At £180 a month for the train season ticket and bus pass, this was not cheap either. Getting a car was the highest priority.

Then we had to decide what car to get. Initially I was thinking that we would get a small four door car (superminis as they are called here). Having a Ford car already and being happy with it, I had settled on a new Ford Fiesta (a bit smaller than Corolla in the US), which has got great reviews. But then wife came up with the argument that the family car - Ford Fusion - is already five years old and will need to be replaced in 2-3 years time since it is too old for a family car. So why not buy a bigger family car now and I drive the Fusion we have? This way we can get away with buying just one car. That sounded like a good idea and we started researching for a big car, which would have a third row and seat seven people if required. We then embarked on looking first-hand at our various options.

Car dealerships must be the most customer-unfriendly business in the UK. They close at 6 on a weekday. Saturdays are better, but are open practically only for a few hours on Sundays. Plus, they don't seem to be interested in selling cars, since they don't show any interest in the customer.

• We first called a Vauxhall dealer to see a Vauxhall Zafira who asked us to come down immediately. After going there, we were asked whether we have an appointment. Since we did not have one, we were asked to come back later for a test drive. After some talking, we were reluctantly shown a car which I took for a drive. The Zafira was cheap, but the reliability ratings were bad, so we moved on.
• We took a look at a Volkswagen Touran. The salesman had a showroom model only and asked us to come back later to test drive another car. He did not show much enthusiasm and the Touran seemed to more expensive than others, so we moved on.
• Peugeot 5008 was another option. The salesman was really nice and we drove an almost new car, which we liked. But Citroen's Grand C4 Picasso, our last candidate, was very much like this and was little cheaper with better financing options, so we moved on.
• Citroen Grand C4 Picasso was our last option. Initially, we could not find a dealer nearby who had a car for test drive. One of them asked to come after few days and when I went, I was given a three year old car to drive, which was not very pleasant. Another dealership, which was 40 miles away, said he had what we are looking for. He asked us to come down so that he can give us a really good deal. When we went there, he had no clue what we wanted, did not even have a showroom model, and gave a really old car to test drive. This topped everything else! On top of it, he was so rude and did not even looked like he was sorry. We finally found some other dealer in the same group, test drove a car and thought we liked it.

I called around a few Citroen dealers to get a price quote and they all ended up being about the same. We decided to buy from the dealer who showed us the car, paid a deposit and waited for a couple of weeks for the delivery.

I find it hard to not compare our car buying experience in US. When we bought our Odyssey minivan there, I got an email quote through Edmunds.com from all the dealers around. With this we got a fair idea of the prices and called the biggest dealer nearby who gave us a quote which was $1200 cheaper than the next best. Without even setting a foot out, we knew where we were going to buy. We went to the dealership lot, picked out a colour from there and got the car in less than a week. US dealers are supposed to be aggressive, but our experience was different. UK dealers seem to be exactly the opposite.

Wife has been driving the new car. With narrow streets and tiny parking spots, it is not exactly a great experience, but the car itself is great. Somehow wife handles it better than I do with regards to parking. It is smaller than the Odyssey we had, but seems as good.