I did it. I passed the test this morning!!! Started just after Christmas, and have had 14 lessons (1 hr lessons) so far.
Here’s a little FAQ for driving schools and the test.
As mentioned before the driving schools specifically teach you how to pass the test, not how to drive. Nothing more, nothing less. For example, they don’t teach such things as how to use the lights, indicators, mirrors, seatbelts, or anything about the car or safety, as these are not necessary to pass the test.
They do teach you how to pass the test very easily through various methods of lining up parts of the car with corners and other things on the test drive, before turning the wheel X times etc. The driving school courses are near identical replicas of the testing courses. I tested at Shulin (Taipei County) and they had even let the instructors mark various points on the course to help them. Also, if you go through a school you will be able to use their car, which has various markings on it to help you with this. Otherwise you have to use the test ground’s car. You can’t take your own.
Even if you can already drive it is a good idea (almost essential, I’d say) to practice a little at a school first. This is because parts of the course are actually quite tricky, not because you have to be an experienced driver to do them, but because they are not things you are likely to encounter in real conditions. EG, you have to park in reverse, in one go. You are not allowed to stop and correct by going forward again. Also, if you do the test by yourself, you might not know what you are supposed to do at various stages of the course, eg, where you have to stop and do a hill, when to change gear etc.
As I said before, my driving school was 9000 NT for manual, plus some extra fees for using the car on the test, them taking you to do the written test, the actual licence fees etc. That’s for 30 hours, but they rush you through and encourage you to test (as part of a group with other students) as early as possible (I just had 14 lessons) because most people just give up the rest of the lessons once they’ve passed the test (but i want to go and get more practice). The instructor won’t be in the car wit you the whole time. He’ll teach you one thing, watch you do it, then bugger off while you drive around practicing for the rest of the lesson. That’s not such a bad thing, as it’s good practicing by yourself, and most of the instructors will be smoking or chewing binlang while they’re in the car anyway. The course includes one lesson on the real roads. The way they incorporated that came as a bit of a surprise. On the way to do the test today, the instructor pulled over and said “you drive”. Three of us took turns driving the car to the test centre in Shulin (in the rain with rush hour traffic).
In detail, the road test is as follows:
- Turn a corner, stop, then reverse into a parallel park and a normal park. You have to do it in reverse, in one go, and without crossing the sensor lines marking the parking space. Come out again.
- Drive forwards through a fairly narrow S-bend, then reverse out, without letting your wheels cross the lines on either side (our school had us in the backseat watching the person before us - the guy in front of me crossed the line at this point, enough to fail the test, and had to immediately get out of the car and walk back to the test centre).
- Turn a corner, then another corner, then stop at a railroad crossing until the light stops flashing.
- Change into second gear then stop at a traffic signal if necessary.
- Turn a corner then stop at a stop sign.
- Drive straight along a fairly narrow lane, changing up to third and down again, without crossing the lines on either side.
- Turn a corner, then drive up a hill and come to a complete stop (applying handbrake) between lines on either side, with your wheel in front of one line, but behind another.
- Make a hillstart without rolling back or stalling, then change into second as you go down the hill.
- Stop at another set of lights.
The written test has been covered in other posts so I won’t go into much detail. We tested written yesterday, then road today. The school gave me an English version of the rules, which is in the format of all questions that may be asked, with answers (yes/no or multi-choice). The questions range from the petty (stuff about fines and truck loads etc), to the blatantly obvious, to the ridiculously silly. You have to study it pretty well to make up for ambiguous wording and slight discrepancies between the wording in the book and in the actual test (or for discrepancies between one part of the book and another). At the Shulin test centre they used a computer with questions simultaneously onscreen and through headphones. As I said, the test is tricky - I scraped through with the minimum mark of 85% after one good read of the book. I reccomend 3 or more good reads, to make sure (and it’s a long, boring book - I nearly failed because I couldn’t be bothered memorising unnecessary stuff about truck loads, and shit).
I htink that’s about it. Just remember that once you get your licence, they’ll give it an expiry date equal to that of your ARC. If you want the full licence, check the Legal Forums for information about making an administrative appeal.
Brian