Crazy Lady's guide to Earth driving

[Andara Bledin]

My car loan doesn't have any requirement as regards insurance other than the base liability.

I'm not letting that stop me from getting comp and collision with a moderate deductible.

My mom's car loan, however, had a clause that required she have comp & collision with a maximum deductible of $500.

^-.-^

[blas]

Go figure they get rid of parallel parking after for years, everyone had to suffer through it. Ugh.

With my Neon and my current car, I was told I had to have "full" coverage on my vehicle as long as I had a loan on it, not just liability.

[jedikuonji]

When I was in Driver's Ed, I was terrible at parallel parking (fine at it now, amazing what having to do something every day will do for you). The only reason I passed while in class was because my cousin was in the back seat and tossed me hand signals when I got really close to the cones they used.

[Fly]

Us Aussie's get drilled on our tests (at least in my experience). My folks aare good paranoid - watch everyone cos they might kill you, remembering there is also one up your ass who might kill you. I was trained to look for 'escape routes' from any situation. I do remember getting yelled at to get of the left line (closest to parked cars here in Oz) since I nearly took someones door off.
Passed first go though, parking (parallel and normal), u-turns, dodgem cars - got one mark against me for speeding. Woops.
My best mate took 5 attempts and still tries to mount every gutter she sees. Cracks me up

P.S. Subaru's are wonderful cars! My folks Subaru saved my life - twice!

[Shalom]

I can see why they require full coverage when you have a car loan. It's to prevent someone totalling their new car in an accident and walking away from the loan. Bank comes to repossess the car and gets a pile of debris. It's the same reason the bank wanted to see proof of homeowners insurance before they gave me the mortgage.

As far as parallel parking... where on earth can someone live that parallel parking isn't an absolute necessity? Hereabouts (NYC and environs) if you can't parallel park, you basically can't get out of your car unless you have a garage everywhere you go.

(Not that it's all that difficult to do. Especially with a truck like my 1988 S-10 Blazer, where you can crank the wheel over so far that it can almost turn around in its own length. I can get that thing into spots you wouldn't think it would fit in. The '99 blazer was much worse, though.)

What skills are tested?

* Driving in reverse
* Stopping at appropriate signs
* Nearing corners or intersections
* Stopping smoothly
* Sitting properly
* Turning around
* Steering properly
* Parallel parking
* Yielding to right-of-way

Also, here in Joisey, one of the disqualifications of a car for taking the road test, besides the above mentioned defects, is a full length center console, unless there is also an auxiliary brake pedal. (So I wouldn't have been able to take the test in my Blazer, because the 4WD shift lever is there.) The idea is that the inspector should be able to shove his leg across and hit the brake pedal, should the testee do something really dangerous. The bottom line, though, is that if the inspector feels that the car is unsafe, you fail. The official verbiage is:

Possible reasons why your vehicle will cause you to fail

* It is deemed unsafe or unsuitable for a road test
* It has an improper, expired, or no inspection sticker
* Equipment in the vehicle prevents the examiner from reaching the foot or parking brakes
* There is a defect or condition that affects the safe operation of the vehicle including poor brakes, a defective parking brake, unsafe tires, unreasonably unclean interior, a fast engine idle or missing seatbelts

[Pagan]

As far as parallel parking... where on earth can someone live that parallel parking isn't an absolute necessity? Hereabouts (NYC and environs) if you can't parallel park, you basically can't get out of your car unless you have a garage everywhere you go.

In answer to your question, lots of places.

Never needed it in New Mexico and I've lived here my whole life. There's only a couple of places I can think of off the top of my head that there is parallel parking, but it's hardly a necessity. More of a convenience, really. That's why we weren't taught.


*ahem* <singing>

Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above
Don't fence me in...

[protege]

It's getting that way here too. There are very few places where you'd need to parallel park. Some of the older neighborhoods, where public parking garages don't exist, for one. Even downtown, they've removed most on-street parking for traffic reasons. If you need to park downtown, the only options are garages or various lots in the Strip District.