I'll Go Where You Want Me To Go: You can buy a license to drive

I am convinced that you will become a better person if you know a little bit more than you do about obtaining a license to drive in Northern Ireland. As I have recently gone through this process myself, I am considered to be somewhat of an expert (by such notable people as my wife).

Americans (even if they are from San Juan County) are allowed to drive for one year here on their US-issued driver’s license. After one year, you are required to obtain a proper Northern Ireland driving license. (Note that here, it is called a driving license, rather than a driver’s license.)

Our mission president told us on arrival that if we did not obtain a UK driving license, we would have to be transferred to the Republic of Ireland after our first year. I have to admit that for the first week we were here, we thought that we would probably like to transfer halfway through. However, after a few more days we fell so thoroughly in love with our YSA and with Northern Ireland that we definitely did not want to transfer anywhere.

The only thing you have to do to obtain a driving license is go to the Post Office and get an application. This is harder than it appears. Those of you who are regular readers will remember that the Post Office is always closed, but only if you need to mail a letter. You just have to make sure they know you are not mailing a letter and they are open. Because I made it clear I wasn’t mailing a letter, the Post Office was open and I completed the application. On the application form I was asked to state whether or not I needed to wear glasses for corrective vision and if I was currently driving without a license.

I completed the form to the best of my ability. It instructed me to enclose a photograph of my face without smiling. It warned me that if I was smiling in the photograph, the application would be rejected and I could try again after I learned to follow instructions. I suppose this is a subtle warning to wipe that smile off your face mister if you expect to drive a car in Northern Ireland.

I dropped the form, my unsmiling photo, £50 (approximately $82.50) and my passport at a government office in downtown Belfast. They told me that they would send my file to another city on the other side of the country where the Driving Vehicle Authority was headquartered.

Within a week I received a driving license, but I went a month without my passport. When I called to ask where it might be, I was told to wait a week and call them back. I did. When I called back they said my passport was sitting in someone’s office in another building.

I asked if they could pop over to someone’e office in the other building and retrieve it. This was not possible, as they are not allowed to just up and nip over there. I then asked if they could call on the telephone and ask the someone in the other building to send it back to me. They could but they didn’t recommend it, as they didn’t trust the Post Office with my passport. I could not fault their logic and thanked them for being honest. I asked them if I could drive to their office and pick it up in person. They were not able to accommodate that request because they are not set up to deal with the public. You, of course, as an alert reader, will recognise this is an ideal setup for a government agency established to help people obtain a driving license.

They made the helpful suggestion that if I was to send them a prepaid delivery envelope that required a signature on my end I might be able to become reacquainted with my passport. I did this, for the paltry sum of £17 (about $28) and within 10 business days was reconnected with my passport.

Now you might think that I was done. But if you thought this, you would be wrong, dear reader.

This procedure only put me in possession of a driving license. You cannot drive just because you bought a license. You have to have a license in order to drive, but having a license does not entitle you to drive. It just enables you to take two driving tests: a theory and a practical.

I purchased the Official Theory for Car Drivers book for £14.99 (a wee bit less than $25). This 492-page book outlined everything I needed to know to pass the theory test. I read it three times, crying real tears between (and sometimes during) reads. Some of the rules here are the exact opposite of the rules I have been following since I was fifteen years old. (I started driving when I was twelve, but I only followed one rule for the first three years: Never let your Dad find out you are driving his Jeep when he is not home.)

For example, in Northern Ireland, if you want to change lanes, you must first look in your mirrors and check your blind spot. Only then do you signal your intent. Then you complete the manoeuvre. This is reversed from driving in America. There, you signal your intent but before you make your move, you check your mirrors and blind spot. In fact, in Wasatch County, you are apparently encouraged to signal a left hand turn everywhere you drive. My own unscientific poll reveals that one-half of the Heber City drivers have their pickups hard wired for a permanent left-hand turn signal. Approximately half of the time, this setup correctly indicates their intent at one of the next ten intersections.

Another example of different rules required me to learn a new verb. To “dazzle” means to blind a driver of another vehicle, either oncoming or overtaking you from behind. This in turn, required me to learn another verb. To “overtake” means to pass.

Dazzling someone else is not a good thing. You go to great lengths not to dazzle. Don’t use your full beam headlights and keep your foot off the brake pedal. It’s a long story.

The point is, once you start the car, everything else is slightly different than what you have been doing for the past forty-plus years. I had to unlearn all the driving stuff in me wee head and learn some new stuff.

There are so many things that are different here than in the States. Among them:

You must engage your parking brake if you anticipate being stopped for long time at a traffic light.

You must be able to backup around a left-hand corner, through an intersection.

You do not use your turn signals if no one else is around because that might confuse someone. (Really? Who? Who is around to be confused if no one else is around?)

You can fail your driving test for not driving fast enough.

You cannot exceed 45 miles per hour during your driving test.

You must know what the speed limit is where you are driving even when it is not posted.

If you mount a kerb (remember that my posts are spelled correctly in Northern Ireland) during your test, your name is toast. (Or, in my case, Elder Toast.) You don’t always signal going into a roundabout but you always signal going out. It is against the law to honk your horn unless you are in imminent danger of being hit by another vehicle, unless this danger occurs between 11:00 pm and 7:00 am, when it is absolutely against the law to honk your horn no matter what. Not a single taxi driver in Belfast is aware of this law and none to whom I have explained it on the street in front of our flat appeared to be interested in the law. You should never use your emergency flashers so I am not sure why they are included at the factory. In actual practice, every driver in Northern Ireland uses them to signal their intent to park illegally in the middle of the road while they run into the Post Office (which is closed, but only if they are trying to mail a letter). In fact, I believe that throughout Europe, the hazard lights are universally used to indicate that you intend to do whatever you darn well want to. The length of a white dashed line indicates how close you are to a road hazard. (Does this mean that there is a crew rushing around the country repainting the white lines for accidents, floods, breakdowns and other road hazards?)

One of the other hurdles for Americans is to convert distances from feet into metres. We are used to a metre being something that you read to indicate how much electricity you have used.

To make a long story shorter (by at least two paragraphs) I eventually paid the £31 (about $51) fee to take the test. I got 100% on the multiple-choice questions and a passing grade on the video hazard perception portion. Prayer accomplished this. I am not making this up.

This allowed me to legally drive a car when I am accompanied in the front seat by a UK- licensed driver who has held a UK license for at least three years and required me to put large magnetic signs of the letter “L” on the front and rear of our mission car. I did not do either. First, I am always accompanied by a qualified driver who has been telling me how to drive for almost 40 years now and the fact that she is not licensed to drive in Northern Ireland has not prevented her from explaining to me in detail how I should do it.

Second, the “L” in the car window indicates that the driver is a “Looney”, not qualified to drive, who will make sudden illogical stops in the middle of the road and is quite possibly in the finals of the Twit of the Year contest.

On the other hand, holding an L license allows one to take the practical test with a driving examiner. I did do this.

But before I did, I took one driving lesson from an instructor and asked him to teach me how to pass the driving test. We went out for one hour and he taught everything he was able to cram into an hour. He told me I would do fine if I could just remember everything that he had told me and everything that he had not told me but should have. I am not making this up. The lesson cost £15 (about $25), which was a bargain. Most lessons run much more.

I came home and did the following during the next few days:

1. Practiced parallel parking (on what was for me the wrong side of the street from the wrong side of the car). I never actually did this once without driving up on the kerb, which amounts to a test failure.

2. Practiced backing into a parking bay without running across the lines, which I also could not do.

3. Practiced backing though an intersection around a left-hand corner, which is perfectly legal here. This, I could do perfectly every time.

4. Practiced never making hand-over hand turns, which will cause you to fail the test. You must never take your hands off the wheel. Instead, you “feed” the wheel, pulling it one hand and pushing it with the opposite hand. Go out and try this yourself. It is impossible.

5. Prayed a lot. Try this and you will find it much easier than driving.

6. Received a priesthood blessing.

I paid my £45.50 (about $75) fee and scheduled the test. Then I spent £7.99 (about $13) on a second rear view mirror with a cute wee suction cup, which is required for the examiner.

After the exam, I held in my formerly slim hands, a “Certificate of passing a test of competence to drive”! I attribute this to:

The priesthood blessing I received from the elders.
The tender mercy of the Lord.
A brilliant instructor who taught me everything I needed to know to pass the test in one easy lesson

I knew the Lord was in charge of the test the minute I saw my examiner. He was a kindly looking grandfatherly type with a twinkle in his eyes. As we pulled out of the car park, he directed me down towards a roundabout through which I had driven many times, on my way to Pharaohs to get a kebab!

It just got better after that. He had me drive over to the road that runs right past our flat. I spent the entire test in the neighbourhood in which we live! He had me perform all three required procedures within the first 15 minutes of the test. And they were the three simplest of the ones from which he could choose. I had to:

Back up around a left corner.
Do an emergency stop.
Follow a set of driving instructions with no intervention from him.

Backing around a corner is twenty times simpler than parallel parking. The emergency stop was a no brainer. I have been making these for forty-five years. The driving instructions with no intervention involved going straight through a junction and taking the first left at the first roundabout. I have driven that route every week since we arrived and managed to do so for the examiner.

At the end of the examination, He told me he gave me three minor faults. You can receive up to 16 minors before you fail. (You also fail if you get one serious or one dangerous fault.) My minors were:

I signalled a turn before I checked my mirrors.
I signalled another turn before I checked my mirrors.
I stopped for a pedestrian.

I am not making this up. A teenage girl on her way home from school stepped into the road and I stopped for her. Apparently this is very poor driving etiquette. The driving instructor told me I should not have done that. I should have slowed down but kept driving. Seriously? Yes, she would have seen that I was not going to stop and she would have turned around. I am not making this up. Here in Northern Ireland we believe in not stopping for pedestrians if we have the right of way. By stopping, I invited her to cross and we don’t want to do that. Inviting is bad. Stopping is bad. Frightening them back up onto the footpath in fear of their lives is good. Is this a great country or what?

Well, thankfully this story has come to its end. As near as I can tell, it cost me £181.48 and several nights’ sleep. This is approximately $299, excluding the value of several nights’ sleep.

The good news is that unless I upset our stake president here (which, as you who know me, know, is not a given), we will be able to finish our mission right here in Belfast, Northern Ireland without having to transfer down South (to Ireland).

It’s not as cool as James Bond’s license to kill, but I am now licensed to drive.

Elder Blickenstaff

Waiting around to take my driving test.