Terrifying, but I drove for only two hours before getting my driver's license in California. At the time (and possibly still) you didn't have to have driver's training courses to take the test if you were 18+.
In California if you apply for a license while under 18 you have to take lessons. Nowadays most people take them online. Anecdotally most new drivers get their license while this would apply to them.
Heh, I'm dating myself, but I got my first license at 14 in Idaho. The only thing I needed was a 10 minute practical exam and to pass the written exam. There was no minimum required hours of driving (Scary, I know!)
They've since changed it to 16 with 50 hours of supervised driving.
Why did it take you two years and a small fortune? It took me some reasonable number of hours over ~6 months (at the time in CA you could get your learner's permit at 15.5 and license at 16) and a couple hundred bucks for a driving instructor.
I tend to agree. It was interesting comparing the experience of getting a license in California in 2001:
very few restrictions if you were 18, which I was,
a laughably easy practical test with no training required,
no waiting period after getting a permit - you could take the test the same day if there was a slot available;
to getting one in Ireland in 2014 (12 hours of instruction required regardless of your age, must have had a permit (or foreign license) for at least 6 months, and a test with a 40% pass rate where you have to bring a standard transmission vehicle if you want to drive stick legally).
Even after 13 years of driving, those 12 hours of training were actually pretty helpful. Not just for cleaning up bad habits, but for techniques I'd never properly learned in CA, like stick shift starts up steep hills with a stiff clutch. My city driving has improved as well.
Each US state has its own licensing laws and you may have issues with the particular laws in your state, but it's certainly wrong to say there's no mandatory driver's ed in the US. California, for example, requires 30 hours of classroom education and 6 hours of behind-the-wheel instruction from a state-licensed professional driving school.
I applied for a permit (purely knowledge/eyesight test), and that allows you to drive any normal vehicle (class-A) as long as there is someone in the passenger seat over 25/at least 5 years possessing a driver's license (or something like that).
I went home and took the family car out on public streets with my Dad.
6 months later, I applied for my license. Simple 15 minute public roads driving test in the same family car.
Driving for the first time was scary -- one of the first streets I went down was one lane with cars parked on each side. Doing that without being used to the car's physical space (it was a large Suburban) is a little crazy.
I learned to drive at ~24. I think I did 10-12 hours of lessons before I took a test. The driving instructor was cool with showing up at 7am or some time like that and doing an hour of lessons before I had to leave for work. They were also relieved to be teaching an adult (relatively speaking).
Most US states require more than 20 hours in the classroom (usually a week or two), plus 8+ hours of actual driving with a driver's education teacher, plus some number of years with a learner's permit, where driving is only allowed during the day with a licensed driver 21 or older supervising in the vehicle. Then written and driving tests by the DMV must be passed to get licensed.
In practice, the classroom study usually isn't all that rigorous, and the testing is likely too easy.
But the requirements on paper aren't typically any easier in the US.
What's most needed is probably refresher quizzes for license renewals to remind drivers of commonly forgotten or new driving laws. Like who has right of way at a 4 way stop, or how to zipper merge.
I hate driving, and I never bothered with getting the driver's license. Eventually, it got to a point where I just felt limited and embarrassed by not having a driver's license, and went took a few classes and dealt with it.
I was 24 when I got my driver's license and I've probably driven a dozen times total since then (rental cars in Hawaii, Colorado, or LA mostly). It's really easy, and I feel a lot better for having that ability. I'm 100% glad I did it and added that valuable life skill to my arsenal, despite still hating driving and still almost never using it.
It's legitimately absurd how easy it is to get a driver's license in the US. I got mine at 16.75 after doing a quick (as in, it took me <10 minutes) multiple choice "test" and a 20 minute drive around town.
There's also been a steady increase in the difficulty of obtaining a license over the years. My grandfather started driving at 14; at the time you didn't even need a license to drive. My parents were required to pass a written test, wait two weeks, and then pass a road test. I had to pass a written test, wait 6 months, and then pass a road test. Minors in my state now have to pass a written test, wait 6 months, then pass a road test to get a time-of-day- and passenger-restricted license, and then wait another 6 months for an unrestricted license.
I'm not sure what state you're talking about, but most I know are way less. presuming the learner is over 18 the requirements tend to be something like
1. A written exam, takes ~30 mins to 1 hour at the DMV
2. A 5 hour class (when I took this the 5 hour class clearly hadn't been updated for decades)
3. A driving exam that took ~30 minutes end to end
My understand is that most states are like this, though it gets a bit more stringent if you are under 18
The states vary, but when I was 16 in Maryland I had to do classroom training for some number of hours, then when I got my learner's permit I had to do some number of hours of driving with an instructor, then some number of hours driving with a licensed adult. Only after all that, and I think some minimum time limit, could I take the 20 question multiple choice test and a parking test to get my driver's license.
Driving school wasn’t required, though you can take a “driver’s ed” class in high school to skip the exams at the DMV (you take them as part of the class). The exams are free (IIRC), you just have to pay to get the license when you pass. You only have to pass a written exam to get your “permit” (limited license). You need a certain amount of hours of driving to get a full license; but these aren’t really tracked. You just need a guardian (if you’re under 18) or a license holder to sign an affidavit saying you drove the hours. I definitely hadn’t actually driven the number of required hours when I turned 16 and my mom signed off on it.
It varies widely by state, of course; I started driving in Alabama when I was 15. I just recently had to pay WA to transfer my license from Colorado, I guess that was just administrative fees.
Where I learned in the US, we had a few weeks of driver's ed classes in HS, then practiced with an instructor for a bit. After that, getting a permit then a license was simple enough. At this point, I don't get anything more than vision tests and I don't actually have to renew my license until I'm 60 or something.
So why are you making a sweeping claim about all US drivers tests, given that you only took one of them? The one you took was clearly bad. The process I went through in Maryland is apparently one of the tougher ones. 30 classroom hours, 6 hours one-on-one with an instructor, 50 hours daytime driving with an older licensed driver, 10 hours nighttime driving, and then you can take the written and driving tests (which require you to parallel park). After that you can drive on your own but still can't have any non-adult passengers and can't drive past midnight or your license is suspended for a year. After 18 months of driving with no moving violations and no other criminal convictions, you finally get a real driver's license. The whole process takes a couple of years.
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