What I learned from my quest to become a legal Italian driver
There have been many posts and comments about Italian drivers licenses. Most expressing displeasure with having to go through the process. With me it's more of an outrage that I have to take classes, pass tests and end up with what is essentially a junior license. Me who has been driving for 50 years with a near perfect record. Well I passed the permit test the other day and I am that much closer to being legal. I'm writing this to let people know what I did leading up to the test.
I, given that I'm in Sicily, wanted to take advantage of the grey areas and just pay for a license. Why not? What could it cost. Everybody I asked told me they knew somebody that they could ask but inevitably they would come back saying that it was not possible. Finally, after several months I found a driving school instructor who knew somebody that could do it. It would only cost me €5000!!!. Then he said that I don't need to expose myself to crime and that he could help me get the license legally. I speak Italian but my vocabulary is that of the child I was when I left Italy. The test language is purposely made difficult to reduce the numbers of potential drivers. The instructor said, since my time line was short, I am leaving Italy for France in October, that he could work with me on an accelerated basis and get me the license before we leave Italy. For fifteen hundred euros I would get both class and private lessons as often as I liked, even everyday, until the test. That's what I did. I also took hundreds of tests online. By the time it was test time I was getting an average of two wrong answers per test. I actually got none for the test.
I bought a book, one that was both in Italian and English, and I never opened it. While taking tests I took notes on my wrong answers and I studied those topics online. The teacher taught the tricks like the words that are always true or false, the sentence structure that is used to trick the test takers, and the quick calculations for stopping distances. The test is difficult because it is a true/false test rather than multiple choice as is used elsewhere. The 40 questions are selected from about 10,000 so even if you take the test a 1000 times, your not going to see all the questions before you go take the test. That is why it's important to learn those tricks and patterns I mentioned above.
Now, at the end of October, I will drive to France with my new Italian junior license (driver test will be just before we leave) and when in France, my existing New York license will, once again, be usable for another year. After that I'll see what I could do.
There have been many posts and comments about Italian drivers licenses. Most expressing displeasure with having to go through the process. With me it's more of an outrage that I have to take classes, pass tests and end up with what is essentially a junior license. Me who has been driving for 50 years with a near perfect record. Well I passed the permit test the other day and I am that much closer to being legal. I'm writing this to let people know what I did leading up to the test.
I, given that I'm in Sicily, wanted to take advantage of the grey areas and just pay for a license. Why not? What could it cost. Everybody I asked told me they knew somebody that they could ask but inevitably they would come back saying that it was not possible. Finally, after several months I found a driving school instructor who knew somebody that could do it. It would only cost me €5000!!!. Then he said that I don't need to expose myself to crime and that he could help me get the license legally. I speak Italian but my vocabulary is that of the child I was when I left Italy. The test language is purposely made difficult to reduce the numbers of potential drivers. The instructor said, since my time line was short, I am leaving Italy for France in October, that he could work with me on an accelerated basis and get me the license before we leave Italy. For fifteen hundred euros I would get both class and private lessons as often as I liked, even everyday, until the test. That's what I did. I also took hundreds of tests online. By the time it was test time I was getting an average of two wrong answers per test. I actually got none for the test.
I bought a book, one that was both in Italian and English, and I never opened it. While taking tests I took notes on my wrong answers and I studied those topics online. The teacher taught the tricks like the words that are always true or false, the sentence structure that is used to trick the test takers, and the quick calculations for stopping distances. The test is difficult because it is a true/false test rather than multiple choice as is used elsewhere. The 40 questions are selected from about 10,000 so even if you take the test a 1000 times, your not going to see all the questions before you go take the test. That is why it's important to learn those tricks and patterns I mentioned above.
Now, at the end of October, I will drive to France with my new Italian junior license (driver test will be just before we leave) and when in France, my existing New York license will, once again, be usable for another year. After that I'll see what I could do.
