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"TheBeerNut":1l9g91pv wrote:

&amp;quot;Les_Howarth&amp;quot;:1l9g91pv wrote: Then she has to learn to drive and pass her test. Hopefully by then we'd be able to buy a car... So what I'm saying is don't hold your breath. <!-- s:wink: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_wink.gif" alt="" title="Wink" /><!-- s:wink: -->[/quote:1l9g91pv]
As an immigrant myself, allow me to pass on Weird Things About Living in Ireland No. 472: You don't have to pass a driving test to be allowed drive on your own in Ireland. As long as you've failed [i:1l9g91pv]twice[/i:1l9g91pv], the road is yours. Most Irish drivers I know bought a car first, then learned to drive.[/quote:1l9g91pv]

Not *entirely* accurate, to be fair. You can drive on your own without ever having sat a test at all - 2nd provisional licence (learner's licence basically) states you can drive unaccompanied, and you don't have to have done your test to get that. Each provisional licence lasts 2 years, so you just need to have had your first provisional. However, you don't have to have *driven* in the 2 years that you held your first provisional o_O

For third and subsequent provisionals, you need to have applied for your test to be eligible for the licence. You don't have to have sat it mind, just applied for it. And yes, if you've sat it, and failed, you can still drive away from the test centre. However you do have to have a fully-licenced driver accompany you at all times on all but your second provisional. Or at least, that's the law. Not that anyone actually *obeys* the law, or anything foolish like that!

Whole thing's a bloody farce, though it wouldn't be quite as bad if people didn't take such liberties and stretch every loophole they can find and outright break the law.

You're quite right, of course.

I hadn't realised that after your second provisional you're supposed to be accompanied again (possibly because I've never seen that law obeyed). Weirder and weirderer.

It really gone beyond a joke, if you’re on your fifth or sixth provisional license you should not be allowed on the road, people seem to forget that a car can be a lethal weapon. The driving test is not that hard to pass and it not really a true test of a persons ability to drive.

I known the argument that people need to get to work and we have a really bad public transport system. But look at the US, many cites have a nonexistence public system but unless your qualified you don’t drive on you own.

Yeah, but they have scheduled and registered driving instruction through school early on, which we don't, and until we do reform the instruction system (which they're talking about doing "once the backlog is cleared", like that'll happen anytime soon!) I don't think there's much can be done.

As for it not being hard to pass the test, ha! A friend of mine is currently learning, just got his second provisional, is the most careful and conscientious driver I know, never breaks the law, and has failed his test three times. I've sat with him I don't know how many times as he was driving the last two years, and I don't know what he's failing on, except that the testers are looking for the "perfect drive". He is perfectly competent and perfectly safe, but stupid things like stopping a little too close to or far from the car in front at lights, going a little too slowly down a narrow road with cars parked on both sides and a school emptying for the day have failed him his test.

Anyway, I should stop ranting. This has gone completely off-topic.

Basically though Les - you will need regular access to a car in order to learn to drive/get the experience needed to pass the test, so that will probably need to be one of your first priorities when you get here. Just some cheap banger like (or if you have one at the minute, bring it over, as the €1000 re-registration charge is probably less than you'd pay to get a semi-decent car here). Driving lessons are really expensive, and an hour once a week isn't enough to pass the test unless you're doing it for months.

Also, have your wife apply for her test *the second* she starts learning, as she's likely to have at least 6 months, if not a year to wait before she gets a test date.

The no such thing as a perfect drive, two years is a very long time to being driving. I suspect that people pick up a lot of bad habits and presume that they have being driving for a length of time they must be good, you don’t have to break the law to be a bad driver. It’s a test if you want to pass just do what they want!

If they are really that good get them to do an advance driving course (when they pass), that’s a much better judgue of ability than the driving test.


es she will be fine, they don’t strop L drivers on the motorways so I cant really seen them enforcing the rules provisional drive having a qualified drivers with them