True story: My Thai wife, in her early 50s, has had a driver’s license her entire adult life but has never learned to drive.
I laughed irl.
:eek::eek::eek:
Don’t worry. She’s never gotten behind the wheel.
I met someone like that in China. She was in a position of some minor importance and had been given a driver’s license as a gift from the Communist Party, despite never having driven or taken a lesson. Fortunately, she knew better than to actually get behind the wheel.
So instead, we were chauffeured around Shanghai by a friend’s 19-year-old son who had been licensed for a few months. Apparently the standard driving course in China does not cover using indicators, parking, backing up, checking blind spots, or what those white dashed lines on the road are. It seems to cover only when to use the horn (answer: all the time). I returned to the US with a much better understanding of the Asian driver stereotype.
Someone’s been drinking too much saki.
If someone is drinking a tea made from a dead writer’s ashes, I think they have more problems than driving.
PJ O’Rourke has a nice essay about driving in the third world in which he refers to the horn as the “Lebanese Brake Pedal”.
My father used to yell at people “where did you get your license, the Five and Dime?” Maybe you do get yours that way over there.
BTW, I’ve noticed that Indians are not that bad drivers. The rest though - no comment.
Big deal. I used to know someone who has a license, never learned to drive, and drives all the time.
Watching her try to parallel park was… amusing.
(And no, she’s not Asian.)
I’m pretty sure that joke is already circulating in Hawaii (which is ~70 percent Asian), for what it’s worth.
I drove in Hawaii a few months ago when I visited my brother who lived there. Oahu has some bad traffic and my brother briefed me on strange driving habits of Asians (older females in particular) before he ever let me get behind the wheel. I’ll be damned if I wasn’t glad that he did that. I saw it all mainly with them being unusually timid in traffic and then doing something incredibly stupid and unpredictable at the last second.
To the OP, stereotypes exist for a reason. Yes, there are a lot of bad Asian drivers with a distinctive and dysfunctional driving style. I have no idea why that is but most people know that and even other Asians acknowledge it. You shouldn’t be overly sensitive in defending a whole group about something when the issue has a basis in reality. That is a Don Quixote quest where you will find few allies. Most people will just see it as self-serving PC behavior. If you are talking about defending specific individuals, that is a different story.
I knew an American lady who went to get her driver’s license upcountry here. She said that during the written test – and they did have an English-language version on hand for her – the instructor kept looking over her shoulder and correcting her when she put down a wrong answer. (If you have a license from a US state, then you don’t have to take the written or driving tests, just the one for color-blindness, but her state license back home had expired.)
Oh, we do have those too. 
HAH!!! Goes one better 
I joined the USAF at age 17. I had gone through Driver’s Ed classes in High School, I had done everything needed to get my license except get my parents signature. Long backstory there, but those signatures weren’t going to happen. So, when I got to my first duty station, I bought a motorcycle.
I was able to register it, I was able to insure it. When I went to get my license I was only a couple of months away from turning 18, plus I was in the military, so I assumed that my military ID would be enough to get my license.
I was told no, that I had to have signatures or that I had to sue to become an emanciated minor. Being the mature person I was, I burst into tears, sobbing about how I was old enough to die for my country, but couldn’t get a license to be able to drive in defense of my country. I think I also said something about only 2 months before was 18 and couldn’t afford a lawyer and working on the flightline and needing to get there right away.
I got called in to a back office, and the manager explained that he would could make the decision, so he signed my papers, I got my pic taken and my new license.
No driving tests.
Now, in California, when you leave the military, if you have a valid license, you don’t have to take any new tests, and because I had a motorcycle license, it was assumed that I had passed the 4-wheel vehicle tests.
When I moved to Arizona, because I had a valid Calif license, no tests were required and my license was good for 20 years. Now that I’m moving to Texas, because I have a valid Arizona license, I won’t need to be tested.
17 years, and I have never taken any sort of test to drive.
In some places, if you move and are under 25, you have to retake the written (e.g. computer nowadays) test. Also the “vision test” seems to be required every time IME, but that consisted of me telling them, yes, I need the vision correction endorsement, and yes, I can read those letters. Hardly an optometry appointment.
Arizona is crazy. I think it’s up to more than 20 years now?
And of course, test will be required if you get lots of points or DUI (probably only if more than one DUI).
Looks at license…you are right, its good for 25 years. I don’t remember taking a vision test when I got this one, but it was so long ago. No points or DUI’s here. I take driving seriously.
I think I remember that there is a new requirement that after 65, you will need to get your eyes tested every 4 years. Or maybe that got shot down, because you so correctly pointed out, Arizona is crazy.
Is that a recent license? I think there’s another state I’ve seen with 10+ years, can’t remember which. I am used to 5. I remember this guy’s being for even longer, but it might be that my memory’s failing. I am not sure what the 65+ people have to do around here, maybe it is still 5 years?
I meant Arizona is crazy, re: licensing. As far as the rest of stuff in the state, the jury’s out. 
California makes everybody retake the written test to switch licenses from out-of-state. 36 multiple choice questions. The last time I took a written driving test was when I was 15 and getting my learner’s permit, but I skimmed through the manual before going to the DMV and I’m glad I did, because I probably would have failed otherwise. Who knows exactly how many feet you’re supposed to put your turn signal on before turning? I mean, after driving for awhile I have a feel for how much warning to give, but putting an actual number on it? Nope. Or the unposted speed limit in an alley? And who the hell knows what the criminal penalty is for fleeing and eluding a traffic stop? Those were the kinds of questions asked.
Well, someone had to link to it.
The day I arrived in Bali (the guidebooks all warn you not to rent a car because you will die in a firey car wreck, rather they suggest you hire a driver and car, which doesn’t really cost more than renting a car), I learned that Balinese drivers are all insane. Terrible psychotic drivers, every last one of 'em with a death wish.
I was particularly terrified by the “family moped” - little tiny motorcycles with, I’m not kidding here, a family of 5 on one bike. Dad in front driving, mom sitting sidesaddle in a skirt (sarong) behind him, children on her lap, baby in a sling on her back, and they’re going 65 miles an hour on crappy roads with cars and buses whizzing by inches from her knees. She never even flinches.
By the time I left 2 weeks later, I realized they’re actually excellent drivers in a system that’s just so freaking different from mine, I couldn’t do it. They’re so…zen about impending firey death that somehow never pans out because cars just…dance around each other, floating free at the final moment…
Seriously, 2 weeks of aggressive driving on mountainsides with sheer cliffs and one lane roads with hairpin turns, and the only accident we witnessed was a tour bus that just fell over because there were too many people on top. No injuries. That’s actually some pretty good driving, if you think about it. Terrifying drying, but *good *driving.