Noelle McCarthy:Drivers can learn plenty by observing others

Everyone who passes the learner's test at the AA Centre in Albert Street gets a set of L plates and a licence in the mail. Photo / Doug Sherring

If you're driving on a restricted license, you are permitted to carry your spouse as a passenger in the car. Did you know that? I did not know that. It was one of the two questions I answered wrongly in my theory test for the LTSA.

The other one concerned how often you have to get a warrant check if your car is more than six years old. I said a year and got it wrong. It's every six months.

So, 32 out of 35. I'd have liked a perfect score, but seeing as I have neither a spouse, nor a six-year-old car, or any car in fact, it will be a while until either of these two pieces of information are germane.

In the meantime, I passed! I am a learner driver, and there is a little piece of paper in my wallet to prove it. Shortly, my learner licence will appear in the mail. I want it so much, I'm terrified it will get lost in the post.

At 31, I am in possession of a pair of L plates, and a set of driving lessons from the lovely people at the AA.

Over the next few months I am going to learn how to drive. The thought of it fills me with wonder, and terror and awe. This is the single most exciting undertaking in my adult life.

I am not a driver. I was never meant to be one. It wasn't in the script. Mine is the passenger door, my view has never been from behind the wheel. These are the things I told myself as I walked down Mayoral Drive to the AA building yesterday morning, to take the learner's test. I'd spent the three days before studying for it. Clicking obsessively on the road code quiz on the AA website ( Sample Question: "A flock of farm animals comes towards you on a country road. Do you a) beep the horn to disperse them b) speed up c) slow down and pull over to the left, or d) shout "are you the farmer". The correct answer is c) but I would give extra marks for b) or d) depending on the quality of the spectacle it created.

I answered hundreds of questions, and I learnt the give way rules by heart. I still had absolutely no hope that I would pass. It was all too theoretical this knowledge, because it had absolutely no bearing whatsoever on my life. It was trying to learn a foreign language by rote. My version of aramaic, the Give Way Rules, and when you can make a right hand turn.

And then, last Monday, something happened. I realised that cars are actually all around me, every day. Going places, obeying signals, following rules, making turns.

It is possible to witness the arcane rules of the road in action, simply by watching traffic. I stood on the corner of K'Rd and Mercury Lane and watched the lights there until their logic revealed itself to me. And the complicated equations of red arrows and green arrows and red circles and green circles suddenly untangled itself and became instantly easy to read.

Up until this week, I have paid absolutely no attention to the traffic on Hobson St, or any of the streets I walk down every day. I know enough to stay out of it, and I welcome a lift in the rain, but aside from ensuring I'm not run over, I have never had any interest in what might be going on in the road. I am a pedestrian. The business of the road doesn't interest me, aside from the buslane, But now, I want to get on the road. And all of that has to change.

So we began with the test. The theory test that I crammed for, and that I was sure I would fail. There were a whole bunch of Indian youths sitting it the day I went to make the appointment. Afterwards, I asked one of them if it was hard.

Yeah, he said, looking gloomy. He probably failed it. Never mind, it wasn't his time.

When I went back there yesterday there was a French girl there to do hers as well. She was very nervous also - but we both passed.

There was a crazy question about what side the car pulls to if you have a blowout. I used elementary physics to figure it out. There's no physics in whether you're allowed to carry your spouse or not though, and my guess was wrong.

When I told a friend about that question later, she said when she sat the test she thought spouse meant "brother" so I felt better after that.

"Dog. New. Tricks" was one of the texts I got back after I told my friends I'd passed. It's true, and I'm fine with that. Proud, even, that I'm taking my pedestrian self, and letting her be taught what to do behind the wheel.

The plates are going on, and I'm checking my blind spots and manoeuvring carefully into a whole new world. I'll see you on the road.