At some point, shouldn’t there be a cutoff? If you can’t pass the written portion, what hope do you have in passing the part that ya’know…actually involves driving?
You gotta admire the perseverance. I only hope there is a followup in the years to come when and if she passes the practical test so everyone else on the road has fair warning to plan alternate routes.
Holy shit … did she ever bother studying or did she just take it until she memorized all the questions?
I was immediately reminded of another Asian woman I know (also in Toronto) who revealed she tried her written test 35 times and her driver’s test 10 times before becoming successful.
I wonder how much of the trouble was with language rather than understanding basic rules of the road. I hope she doesn’t drive a Hummer when she finally gets on the road.
I don’t understand this.
How is it possible to do something 950 times and not succeed with it, assuming you were capable of doing it at all? That’s a lot of practice!
But the linked story described a Korean woman in Korea. There shouldn’t have been a language problem (unless she couldn’t read or something). And if, in fact, she can’t read, how is she going to read the road signs?
These tests are usually of the multiple choice variety, I guess it took her 950 tries before she got the right combination of answers.
I wonder how many it would take for a monkey to do the same.
I heard about this from a coworker, but didn’t realize it was the written part she passed. Wonder how much more money and time she will be spending on the actual driving test?
How is her vegetable selling business flourishing in the meantime?
She probably would have passed sooner if she just entered the answers on each successive attempt as
A, A, A, A, A, A, A, A, A, A, A
A, A, A, A, A, A, A, A, A, A, B
A, A, A, A, A, A, A, A, A, A, C
A, A, A, A, A, A, A, A, A, A, D
A, A, A, A, A, A, A, A, A, B, A
A, A, A, A, A, A, A, A, A, B, B
and so on.
She needed to get 60 out of 100 questions correct. I suspect that a monkey would do better.
Yes, I think there should. There should be some sort of annual limit, and some sort of lifetime limit. I’m not sure exactly where the lines should be drawn, but I am sure that she is far beyond any reasonable limits. She would probably have saved a lot of money and time if she’d just hire a damned driver, already.
I knew I’d heard of this lady before. Apparently she’s tried this 179 times since February 5, 272 days ago. That’s an average of almost 2 out of every 3 days or missing no more than one day a week, if the test is only on weekdays.
As for whether random monkeys could do better–let’s do the math. Here’s what I came up with.
Number of answers per question * Minimum score * Number of problems on test = maximum number of distinct sequences of answers
4 *.6x = 950
.6x = 237.5
x = 395.8333…
Taking the level of precision into account, that becomes 400. So, for her to have done better than random chance, she would have had to have had 400 different problems. I could maybe see there being four variations of the test, each with 100 problems. But that assumes she was one unlucky lady, having to go through all possible permutations. And, of course, that there were an average of 4 answers per question.
(I did this type of math on tests all the time, to determine my most likely score. But it’s been a while…)
Yes, there should be a cut-off. Of course, we support making driver training much more comprehensive and mandatory in Canada (and yes, we put our money where our mouths are with financial support for a charity that is involved in trying to increase driver training in Alberta), so perhaps I have a different perspective on this. Driving is the most dangerous thing almost all of us do every day, and we are not forced to give it anywhere near the respect it deserves.
(mean joke follows)
How many times have you had sex?
I heard on* Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me* today that a law has been passed in Korea, allowing taxi drivers to watch TV while driving…
An aunt of mine took over 20 years to pass the actual *driving *exam. Once, she drove into a store, and another time the inspector got out of the car and walked back. When she finally got her license, it turned out she had no place to go.