Well it took me the better part of a week to finally get a Kansas license. I had already jumped through the hoop of proving that I was in the country legally and with that letter, and several other documents in my hand I headed off the the test centre. My intention was only to take the written test as I wanted to make sure I had passed that before hiring a car for the practical test. I was far more worried about the written test than the practical test. By all accounts the practical test was pretty easy but I was worried that I might forget things like breaking distances and other numbers that I may have needed for the written test.
After about an hour of queueing I finally got to the front of the line… only for the computer systems to promptly go down. Apparently this was not exactly an uncommon occurrence but they had no idea how long it would be before it was fixed as it had taken anywhere between a few minutes and a day in the past. After another hour or so of waiting around I got fed up waiting and headed home.
The next day found me back at the centre and I randomly got the same woman again. This time the system was working and I got to take the test and, thankfully, it was not too difficult. The only real interest came with the question “What does this color sign mean” which would have been fine on a colour print out but on a black and white photocopy was rather more interesting. Thankfully there was only one answer that made sense for other reasons but I can only imagine the confusion it had caused people in the past.
That done, I hired a car and a couple a couple of days later headed out to take the practical test. By coincidence I got the same woman again and by this stage I think she just wanted to see the back of me as she gave me a couple of hints such as making sure I stopped at the stop signs in the car park and when parking at the end of the test not to pull through the parking space. The comments I’d had about the test being easy were true and the only feedback I got was that I was swinging a bit wide at corners – something which I was already aware of myself and can only put down to being on the wrong side of the car. The test did make it rather more obvious to me why you saw some atrocious driving on American roads!
Within 5 minutes of the test I was involved in an accident. Most definitely not my fault – someone drove into the back of me when I gave way (or yielded) when they didn’t expect me to. To be honest I suspect I wouldn’t normally have gave way but I was still in cautious mode after my test. If it would have been my own car I wouldn’t have even swapped details as there was no obvious damage to either car but as it was a hire car I thought it best to take at least some details in case I’d missed something. Why we were doing this the police drove past which prolonged things a bit as they swapped our details more formally. Oh well it all got sorted in the end.