Getting an Israeli driver's license (WAS: Re: I've failed my driving test!)

[Amanar]

bboy_mn:

> Just curious, where are you? Not your exact address, just get me in
> the country or state.

I'm from Israel, so even if I did give you my exact address, I doubt 
it would have mattered much ;) (I'm feeling much better thanks to 
you guys)

> Driver's tests in most of Europe, from my limited knowledge, are 
> not only very difficult but the License is also very expense, 
> frequently amounting to a few hundred US dollars.

Here's the way it goes in here:
We have a written test, but you don't get marks out of a hundred for 
it. You need to answer 30 questions, and if you got up to 4 mistakes 
you pass. The fifth is a fail (thankfully, I did manage that one 
first time around)

We can't learn from our parents, we need to take lessons from a 
licensed teacher, at least 28 before we can take the test. You need 
to have passed the written exam before you take the practical one, 
and if you fail either one you have to wait 14 days before you're 
allowed to try again. 

And you don't score points on the practical exam as well. It's just 
the impression you leave on your tester. So a strict tester can fail 
you for anything: driving too fast in narrow lanes, being too close 
to the right-hand side of the road, not looking enough times in the 
mirrors, holding the wheel the wrong way, driving too fast, driving 
too slow, being nervous, breathing too loudly, looking funny, being 
masculine, being feminine, the tester having a bad day etc. 

So when you get to pass with 70, we don't pass for anything short of 
a hundred. Though I can see where that comes from. Over 500 people 
die every year in car crashes (there are only about 5 million 
Israelis, so that's a big number) so you have to be careful as to 
who you give a license. And the government doesn't want too many 
cars on the roads. There are already horrible traffic jams at about 
8 AM and at 4 PM as people come and go from their work. But it 
doesn't make it any fairer.

It costs 113 NIS (New Israeli Shekels) to take the written one, and 
200 to take the practical one. Considering it's about 4.5 Shekels to 
a Dollar last time I checked, that's not too bad once or twice, but 
get too many of them wrong and it gets expensive. And the driving 
teacher doesn't work for nothing - most of the money goes on the 
lessons rather than the tests themselves. And driving under 17 or 
without a license is illeagle here no matter where you do it.

Those were a bit more than 60 seconds on the matter of getting an 
Israeli driver's license :)

-- Amanar, who with the amount of stories here started thinking of 
posting her really spectacular fail in more detail.