Driving Test Blues…Dealing with Disappointment!

As with all other activities in life there will be disappointments when preparing for and sitting the Driving Test and of course after the dreaded day if you are unsuccessful.

One of the constants in life is that no matter how much you prepare and how much you need to achieve some goal or other or indeed how much you deserve success(especially on the Driving Test) there will be days when it all goes wrong.

It’s heartbreaking and gut wrenching especially when you thought you had it all done and dusted. This is one of the most painful feelings to get over but getting over the disappointments is an essential ingredient to lasting success and you must do it in double quick time too. Rather like getting back on your horse after a bad fall!

Sometimes the lack of a successful outcome can be attributable to one’s own inadequacies but sometimes there seems to be no logical explanation. Either way it is an opportunity to re-evaluate your strategies and in so doing you may uncover some hidden truths or even something more dramatic. Certainly you will be stronger for the investigation into the reasons for lack of success and you may gain some valuable new knowledge.

Clearly it is possible to be less prepared than we imagined…we often think we are much better than we really are (particularly when it comes to Driving Skills). Since the real world around us is not sitting or standing still, it is quite possible that the goalposts have changed and what we thought to be the case has changed significantly. This is often the situation when coping with the Driving Test.

Changes to the Driving Test regulations occur fairly frequently but what is constantly changing is the weather and road and building construction. Each of these scenarios can create a situation which you may not have experienced before and faced with a new situation on a Driving Test can throw even the most calm and collected individual  into a state of shock..

Here are just few situations that have been encountered by Driving Test Candidates here in Ireland in recent times.

• Heavy Frost on a Saturday morning led to cancellation of all the morning Driving Tests. The Examiners surveyed the roads in the locality and finally decided to cancel all Tests due to the difficult conditions.
• On the following Saturday another night of heavy Frost caused the cancellation of Driving Tests yet again.
• A Catastrophic brake failure in an Instructors Car just twenty minutes before a Driving Test was scheduled. Lucky that this didn’t happen on the Driving Test itself…Very Lucky!
• A Pupil travelling from the other side of the Country to sit his Driving Test had the Test aborted by the Examiner due to an unearthly Traffic Jam actually in the middle of the Test.
• The same Candidate travelled all the way from the Capital again to find that as he readied himself for the experience the one Examiner who was to have been on duty that day was absent due to illness!
• Just this past week a Candidate had inadvertently left the passenger window of her Car open soaking the passenger seat. The Examiner aborted the Test after a little while since he was very uncomfortable in the wet seat .Very distracting this and understandable .You certainly would find it very difficult to drive if your seat was soaking wet!
• A recent Candidate had an altercation with a very aggressive Van Driver who actually got out of his vehicle and argued the toss with the candidate.
• Another Candidate on the Irish Driving Test drove all the way from the Capital one busy Friday evening for his Test the following morning in Shannon. Despite driving a car that was only 18 months old a badly worn tyre prevented the Driving Test from being conducted.

Some of the above instances could have been prevented others were facets of every day life that we have to contend with and over which we have no control.

 All of course led to great disappointment and inconvenience.

None of these differing scenarios on the Irish Driving Test led to the collapse of Civilisation or a change of Government or banishment to a Desert Island … just another day in the struggle for a meaningful Life. Some days the Sun comes out and shines persistently, on others it rains with a ferocity that is hard to comprehend.

Dust yourself down and give it another shot!