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It's a right of passage and a privilege to eager 16 year olds everywhere. The driver's license is a much anticipated milestone in a young person's life.

My mom took me down to the motor vehicle office on my 15 year, 7 month birthday to apply for my learner's permit. I had studied the driver's handbook from cover to cover for weeks and was confident. I passed the written test with flying colors. I was ready to drive! Well, at least so I thought.

She immediately took me out to an unoccupied industrial park with perfectly paved, straight roads and virtually no traffic. After about thirty minutes of practice, she then had me drive the 113-mile trip on Interstate 10 from Phoenix to Tucson, Arizona. Those were, and still are to this day, the two most frightening hours of my life. I distinctly recall slowing down to let 45-mph recreational vehicles merge onto the freeway. (Trust me, that doesn't happen anymore!) She then bravely declared that I was ready for the test.

Unlike my written test, I was not confident in my ability to pass the secondary driving test. The epic torturous desert drive had done wonders for my driving skills and traffic awareness. However, one seemingly insurmountable hurdle stood between me and my driver's license: the parallel parking test. People have struggled to master this elusive skill for more than fifty years. It also didn't help that my mom drove a gas guzzling sports utility vehicle—not exactly the most svelte, agile car to attempt such a maneuver.

At the time, I dreaded the parallel parking test and have since often noted that, except for those who live in dense urban areas, few ever parallel park again. Even among those who nobly passed the parallel parking test initially, some will admit that they are no longer confident in their ability to do so now. (Hence the advent of cars that can parallel park themselves.) After a dozen years of working in the learning and performance world, though, the driving and parallel parking tests do make sense. After all, how else would the government know if you can really park a car in a tight spot? Certainly not from scribbled-in bubbles on a 25-item multiple choice test.

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