For the past few years In Calgary I’ve noticed not ‘student driver’ but a lot of ‘new driver’ - often with ‘please be patient’ or something similar. This is often on the bottom of the rear window.
Sometimes I have seen these vehicles driving aggressively enough to suggest the driver is not new. Maybe the twenty something kid is borrowing mom’s car.
‘Student Driver’ seems mostly to be on driving school vehicles.
Its too common to only be a joke. Code seems unlikely. I assumed it has been promoted by someone, driving schools or social media perhaps. Most commonly I have seen a very simple long white banner about 3" / 10 cm high with black lettering of almost the same height. No logo or anything. I did an image search and could find many commercially available signs with the same wording but none of the one I have seen the most.
Yes, as I stated above, I did that myself when my 2 teens were learning to drive. And kept the sticker on for a time after they got their licenses, as well.
@Saint_Cad , do you really think a parent is going to go out and remove a bumper sticker (or even a magnet) after every single drive with their teen? Only to put it right back on again? Each student need 40 hours of day driving time and 10 hours of night driving in my state. Most trips are under 15 minutes. That’s 200 drives. Seriously?
The differences in licensing are somewhat surprising.
Here in Oz, at least in my state, a learner driver - so has a learner permit obtained after passing a road rules test - must be driving under the supervision of a licensed driver. They must display front and back a large black on yellow plates with an L. So just called L-plates. Nowadays usually a big magnetic plate.
It is an offence to display L plates if there isn’t a driver under instruction.
Once drivers pass a driving test they become probational drivers and must display plates with a red P on a white background. This runs for a year. Again, an offence to display P plates unless you are a probational driver. P platers have over time been restricted in various ways on how when or what they can drive. Simplifying a bit they currently include, max road speed of 100km/h no matter if the limit is higher. 10km/h over any limit constitutes a breach. No use of technology in the car, whether hands free or not. Zero drugs and alcohol, curfews, and limits on passengers. Plus limits on vehicle power. Loss of license is pretty much mandatory if any of these are breached, plus the clock resets when they get a new license. Then another two years with more relaxed restrictions, no P plates, but fairly draconian penalties for breaches.
Most of the above is directed at drivers under 25. It is a bit easier if older.
Kids wrapping a car around a tree and killing themselves and their friends really started to be an issue. (Trust me, there is little worse than a funeral for an 18 year old killed in a car accident.)
You can also end up on P plates for drink driving offences. This can include alcohol lockouts. So older drivers on P’s isn’t impossible. A friend of mine used to call them pisspot plates.
The rules for getting a license are different everywhere , and sometimes differ by age and exact location. For example, in NY a 16 year old can get a learner’s permit or license , but rules regarding the vehicle and supervising driver differ by where in the state you are driving. One of the rules is that someone with a junior license cannot drive in NYC at all. (although a 16 yr old can drive a vehicle with dual brakes with a junior permit). A 17 yr old can get an adult license if they take an approved driver’s ed course but anywhere in the state other than NYC a 16 yr old can drive with just the junior license and no driver’s ed.
When I was learning, back in 1968, the NYC rules applied to Nassau County also, and though I had a learner’s permit and a drivers ed class, we had to drive all the way to Suffolk County to practice, my father being perhaps too law abiding. A royal pain. At least I lived in Queens almost at the Nassau County border, so it could have been worse.
The rules are really bizarre now - the DMV website actually advises 16 year olds who live in NYC not to take a road test until they are 18. Because they can drive in NYC with a permit and dual brakes but not with a junior license. I don’t think any 16 year old could drive in NYC when I was learning in 1980 , but then as now you could drive with a junior license in Nassau.
I was driving on the 5 [obviously a California transplant - locals call it 'I-5"] going like 65 (which is like a 100mph to Seattle people) BUT there’s a red charger with a “please be patient student driver” sticker that looked really out of place and kept accelerating very quickly. They got behind another car and pulled them over !? WSP [Wash State Patrol] is diabolical for having such a hidden car like that be careful out there neighbors
If accurate, there’s an instance where there’s no actual student driver.
The magnets, too, if in a hot climate. I had them on the car over a full spring and summer while my son was learning. The polymagnet material basically glued itself down to the clearcoat and took me hours of gently scraping and breaking up the magnet bit by bit to get it off.
Lesson: if it’s hot, move the magnets around once a week or so.
Switzerland’s especially weird. The first step in getting a driver’s license in Switzerland is getting a first aid certificate. 190 CHF for English instruction, but I’ve found it elsewhere in German for only 130 CHF.
Interesting! If it were indeed the law here, of course people would get used to it, but it’s not, and I can’t see a reason to remove the sticker/magnet while the student is still in training.
We had a magnet for one of our kids when they were a student driver. I slapped it on when they went out driving, and took it off when we got home. Took two seconds.
Well, you have to learn to drive a big truck somehow. It’s a different skill set than driving a car. The student driver probably does know how to drive a car already, and now they’re learning to drive a truck.
Correct. Just Google ‘truck driving school near me’. You might be surprised how many hits you’ll have.
Virtually every semi-trailer I pass these days has a sign saying ‘drivers wanted’ or ‘owner-operators wanted’. A shortage of truck drivers is currently a real thing.
There’s even more of a shortage of school bus drivers. In all of the nearly a decade that I was looking for teaching jobs, every school district I looked at, every year, had urgent openings for bus drivers. Bus drivers not only need CDLs, like truck drivers, but they also need to be able to pass a background check to work with children, and they have odd hours (only paid for a few hours in the morning and afternoon, and what do you do for all of those hours in between?).
