Your driving license experience?

[dynamitedave]

So, after this thread about your first car, I'm wondering...

Age you got your car license and how hard was it?

What experience you got while learning and just after?

Cross posted from the other thread:

My first vehicle was given to me by my Poppa when I was 8, a Gnat, which was a 3 wheeled farm thing with a bench seat for 3. Then played with motorbikes and at about 12, when pretending to drive Poppas parked-up WW2 Dodge 3/4 ton army truck, Dad said if I could get it going I could drive it. So I learnt to drive LHD. I then progressed to tractors (MF135 and Fordson Super Major) and the Austin Gipsy.

I only drove on the road twice before my test and the second time was on the way to the test!

that's not quite all true. I got my bike license around 16 (Yamaha DT 125F)and my (full) car license a few months later. I could of got either at 15 but never got around to it. After getting my car license, I never really drove a car again until I got invited to a high school party. Dad told me to take the car (4.3l Hemi) instead of the bike as it was pissing down, along with a couple of proper sized bottles of beer (750ml). I ended up towing a couple of others out of the mud and jump starting someone else. Got home at 4am. My classmates stopped me from drinking too much. (Better than little brother years later in Dad's Skyline. He hit a duck after a similar party and return home. Dad got up to find a broken headlight and the car covered with blood. Dad was panicking until he noticed feathers everywhere)

Actual test in those days wasn't too bad. 25 multi choice, 3 oral and a drive. The oral was a killer; if the cop didn't like you, he could ask something really devious. On my bike drive, I lost the cop on the u-turn and was back a the station waiting as he barreled in .

As I had my bike license, for the car it was just the 3 oral and a drive. Only problem was the one horse town only had one Give-way sign and one corner. So it wasn't too hard, though he bitched I should of stopped at the sign Passed though.

Then I did very little road driving until I got my own car at 17.5 and moved to the biggest city in this country. Never seen a traffic light as a driver before then!