Beginners

So, Joey went out for her beginners test today. My wife is finally stepping out to get her motorcycle license.

I remember the first time I went for mine. It was pretty simplistic with a few multiple choice questions, sign recognition and a vision test. After that you could ride as long as you had a licensed driver following you, not on the highway and not at night. It was the perfect situation and it wasn't long before I had my license. Of course, this was also long before the graded licenses and quite some time before I got my car license. As a matter of fact, once I got my bike license I had no intentions on learning to drive a car. I didn't see the point.

I got a call at 10:20am, it was joey, she had just finished the test and ace'd the motorcycle section. Here is the funny part and the part that makes me wonder about the validity of the beginners test. There were ten questions for the motorcycle section and 20 questions for the car section. The CAR section! There were questions on there about passengers in a car,seat belts and even when studs are allowed on tires for the winter! What in the blazes do these questions have to do with a motorcycle and why are there so many more car questions than motorcycle questions? It blows my mind that she failed a motorcycle test due to irrelevant questions about operating a car!

The fact that there are twice as many questions about operating a car then operating a motorcycle just goes to show how relevant they think motorcycles are. The only saving grace is that they offer a motorcycle training course, but that will run you around 400 bucks and it's not mandatory! If the New Brunswick DOT can't be bothered with creating a test that fully covers motorcycle operation how can they expect the riders to take motorcycles seriously?

Even when she gets the beginners license, she can't go anywhere. I can't follow behind her in the car so she can get used to riding and I can't take her to a parking lot to practice. She has to practice on our own property with no other vehicles around. What good is that? We live in an apartment and have no property to speak of which only leaves us with paying 400 for the course. Now don't get me wrong I really want her to take it, but we can't afford it quite yet and I would like to get her used to the bike before enrolling.

Needless to say, I'm a little miffed and more then a little disgusted with how all this works. At least when I took my test the booklet was all about motorcycles and so were the questions. The booklet they gave her is 134 pages long and had a whole 11 pages devoted to motorcycles...that's really sad.

I'm not sure what things are like where you are, but I'm sure they are a damn sight better than this...