I have a product to heartily and door-handle-clutchingly recommend: reflective magnetic student driver signs.
(screen shot from Amazon.com)
These have SIGNIFICANTLY improved my feelings about sitting in the passenger seat while Rob drives. I feel like everyone around us is FOREWARNED (or REARWARNED or SIDEWARNED, as the case may be). And people DO give us more space. When I was researching student driver signs online, I found a BUNCH of people saying no, don’t use signs because there are people who will target student drivers and make things difficult for them: honking and zooming nearby to try to scare them, cutting them off, yelling taunts, etc. I don’t know what kind of gross pinehole would do such a thing, but so far we haven’t encountered ANYONE like that. So far what it seems to be doing is making other people more willing to let Rob merge, more tolerant of him going the speed limit or waiting too long to make a turn, more tolerant of his occasional slight weaving or over-braking or whatever. I am thinking I will leave the signs on even when it is ME driving.
Originally I’d made signs by using the largest font that would fit on a piece of printer paper, and then gluing that to cardboard:
Those blocked too much of the window, were hard to wedge into place, and weren’t much good at night. I still do have one of those in the front window on the passenger side, but then I use the magnets on the driver door, the front passenger door, and the back of the car. If the car looks dirty, I first take a half-wet washcloth and wipe/dry where I want to put the magnet. When we’re done driving for the day, I take them off the car and put them in a nice flat stack on the dining room table, which is where I keep everything I don’t know where else to put it.
Several reviews mentioned that the magnets can come flying off at high speeds, but we’ve done a couple hours’ worth of highway driving by now (did you mistake my new white hairs for highlights?) and haven’t lost one yet. It’s nice to be braced for it, though: I went into the purchase thinking, “Well, they’re about $6 each, and if we DO lose one from time to time, they’re STILL worth it as long as they’re not dropping off every time we go driving.” And they haven’t dropped off at all yet, so that’s good. If one did, I would have an order for more signs placed within microseconds.
I want a version of those for myself that say “Not good at driving in snow” or “driver is from Arizona” for when I have to white knuckle it over snowy roads now that I live in Minnesota.
These are great! And agreed that worrying that they will get you targeted seems like something theoretical that rarely occurs in practice. In France, these are required – first a sign that shows that there’s an accompanied student driver and then, for the first year or two after you get your license, a sign that indicates that you’re a new driver. It’s great.
In Australia these are required too, so I was initially very confused by this post! I had no idea it wasn’t a worldwide thing.
Yes! We have L plates in the UK, it’s a legal requirement. And then people are far more forgiving of you when you sit trying to pull out onto a main road, scared of being hit by a lorry that may come barreling around the corner at any minute.
YES!! We have those exact same ones and they are on my van right now! I have one on the back and one on each side. Each teen has made fun of them until they actually get behind the wheel and realize that driving in the greater DC area is terrifying. :D
I don’t take them off.. I can’t be bothered. I just drive around with them on the van for nine months like an A-Hole. :)
I think we must have the same dining room table. Everything I don’t know where to put ends up there, too, and some of those things hang around for months.
I think that’s brilliant. Whenever I encounter a bad driver I do feel more patient if I remind myself that maybe they’re just learning to drive. I remember being TERRIFIED when I was learning to drive, and making people upset was one of my big concerns. I think as a student driver I would have felt better if people knew I was doing my best but was new and not just driving slowly on twisty back roads to piss them off or make them late on purpose!
Absolutely brilliant! I do find that I’m am more patient and forgiving if the car in front of me states that it’s a student driver.
This isn’t related, but I had to get on here and tell you this. I had a dream that I was at a yard sale and it turned out to be YOUR HOUSE. And I was SO EXCITED to meet you, but I was worried you would think I was some weird stalker, so I didn’t actually meet you and just left you a sticky note. Not sure what that meant….I’m not a weird stalker. I promise!
Ha! I love it.
I did have somebody purposely swerve into my lane when I was in a marked Drivers Ed car, but it turned out to be a classmate of mine (a boy, roughly 15 or 16 years old) who thought it was hysterically funny. I remember my Drivers Ed teacher trying to decide whether she should have me slam on the brakes or take some kind of evasive action and he finally swerved back into his lane. So! As long as Rob doesn’t have any dippy classmates who would think that kind of thing is funny, you should be fine.
These driving posts are making me increasingly horrified that where I grew up, you could take Driver’s Ed at 14. This resulted in me receiving my fully-qualified license two weeks after I turned 15, with a cautionary remark about not driving at night until I was 16. I didn’t have any kind of mandatory driving hours or anything, as far as I can remember. And this would have been in… the year 2000? So not that long ago. Just thinking of it makes me panicky, like WHY WOULD ANYONE TRUST A 14-YEAR OLD WITH A CAR ON PUBLIC ROADWAYS?!
I wonder if we were born in the same year in the same state. Such similar timelines/laws.
It would have never occurred to me that those magnets were on cars that weren’t the driver’s ed teacher’s car. I am so glad you are testing out this whole teen parenting thing so it will be a breeze for the rest of us (much like you did with all of the younger stages).
I think I might have had a breakthrough reading this post and it’s comments. I am going to be 54 yrs old, and I want to be done thinking of the worst case scenario. Like those people who thought having the student driver sticker would attack jerks-I feel like I am so over thinking like that. For most of my life, I have always thought “what is the worst that could happen”-I feel like right now-I want to think, what is the best case scenario? I can honestly say-that has never once been my mind frame, so I am pretty excited!
I would so appreciate it if student drivers all had these signs! I know I would be much more patient and understanding and leave a lot more room between me and them. I wish I’d had something that said “learning to drive a stick shift” when I was learning to drive a standard transmission. The thought of stalling out on a hill at an intersection with people behind me filled me with anxiety for months.
I’m one of those that was downright harassed while driving as a girl in an instructors car (with a driving school name all over it).
It was terrifying.
It never happened when I was driving in my parents (unmarked) car either. Because of this, I’d never put something like this on my car.
I do wonder if girls are way more prone to harassment when in a car marked as a driving student? You’ll have to report back when your daughter is learning to drive.
I am seriously relieved that you have not yet been beset by gross pineholes.
I wish we’d had these magnets when I was in drivers ed. I took forever to turn left.
I passed a student driver on the road a few days ago but I felt really guilty about it. I remember when I was learning that I felt extremely self-conscious of anyone passing me because I was going too slow, but I didn’t want to speed up because I was turning soon or nervous about narrow lanes or whatever the case may have been. I hope he didn’t think I was a jerk for passing him!
I’ve never seen anyone harass a student driver here. Generally people try to give them a wide berth and are more forgiving of mistakes.
I can tell you our interpretation of passing, which is that it usually seems like people are doing it to give him some extra room, get out of his way, or just (understandably) go a little faster than we’re going. If someone zoomed aggressively and then cut in close as if to make a point, I’d think it was jerky—but regular passing doesn’t seem jerky at ALL, and usually we think, “Oh, good, that car isn’t trapped behind us anymore!”