The inevitable happened this morning.

[OlgaH]

Rain and and more rain comes to mind, today a small rear ending of another car, she thought it was starting to go, she started, looked down at cell phone, other car stopped.

Now 1 damaged rent a car that she was using as her car was being repaired.


HiTech

Sorry to hear about the "rain", but most important is your wife is fine

Brace yourself HiTech.

Where GoodOlBoy was raised we have a saying: "Trouble comes in three's".
GOB

GoodOlBoy, leave the superstitions alone

HiTech, may be rubber rollers around car or something like this can help  

[ECOCKS]

Sandro - When the Western Men/Eastern Women Marital Guide is published, there should be a chapter on teaching your wife to drive in the West. My wife finds this to be one of the most intriguing threads from the last three months. She asks most everyday if anything new is here. This should be required reading for every M and W.

Learning to drive while learning to navigate is definitely a challenge. More so, when you remember they are only using their second language and still don't know reference points. Today, my wife was driving down the road and I was trying to direct her to stop at the local Burger King. I know she doesn't know the signs so I'm saying "go left over two lanes to the center so we can turn left," as we go through an intersection and she just can't make sense of "over," "left," "two lanes," "center" or "turning left" so she came to almost a complete stop on the main drag of town. Nerve-wracking.

[kievstar]

Have not read all the posts but many people have told me their foreign wives get in a lot of accidents.  One thing that helps is get a Garmin which can speak in local language directions.  Do not buy the Tomtom (spelling) crap as Garmin is more accurate.  Spend the money for a Garmin.

Regarding driving I hired a private tutor for my wife and she did around 50 hours of driving.  Than she did a written test and than had to drive with a police officer to get her license.  Her passport and test results are sent to Kiev to get officially documented before she actually got the driving license.  Not sure if your wives did this. I still have her driving with a tutor a couple times a week until she gets to USA.  Would have been cheaper to bribe the police officer but cutting corners is not the best thing to do when learning to drive.

[Ade]

Regarding driving I hired a private tutor for my wife and she did around 50 hours of driving.  Than she did a written test and than had to drive with a police officer to get her license.  Her passport and test results are sent to Kiev to get officially documented before she actually got the driving license.  Not sure if your wives did this. I still have her driving with a tutor a couple times a week until she gets to USA.  Would have been cheaper to bribe the police officer but cutting corners is not the best thing to do when learning to drive.

I had my fiancée do this recently in Russia. Same procedure except they have a ground test which they have to that pass includes cone driving, and the like before they are allowed out to do the city driving test. I've seen her theory book and she's described her lessons and it's all top notch. Not all all what I expected - shame on me and my Western bias. The cost was very good too - 10 to 20% of the cost for an equivalent course here in Norway.

Her brother's girlfriend said she failed four times before she resorted to bribing the police dude - it was some years ago now and she says that it's very difficult to do that now as they've tightened up.

Going by the driving I've seen on the roads there I can see that a lot of the people bribed their way trough their tests...

[HiTech]

GOB: "Trouble comes in three's".  came to mind already last night.

This accident was a very normal attention distraction of a younger driver.

The other was a pedal confusion so attempting to stop accelerated car into the one behind her.

KenC: Yep could be a big insurance hit.

Today I will have the fun of calling insurance company and bringing the rental back.

Last night was very bad for Alyona, it really scared her and shook her confidence. She had trouble sleeping all night.

HiTec

[groovlstk]

Sandro - When the Western Men/Eastern Women Marital Guide is published, there should be a chapter on teaching your wife to drive in the West. My wife finds this to be one of the most intriguing threads from the last three months. She asks most everyday if anything new is here. This should be required reading for every M and W.

Excellent suggestion, ecocks. I second the motion.

Learning to drive while learning to navigate is definitely a challenge. More so, when you remember they are only using their second language and still don't know reference points. Today, my wife was driving down the road and I was trying to direct her to stop at the local Burger King. I know she doesn't know the signs so I'm saying "go left over two lanes to the center so we can turn left," as we go through an intersection and she just can't make sense of "over," "left," "two lanes," "center" or "turning left" so she came to almost a complete stop on the main drag of town. Nerve-wracking.

I'd also caution against using GPS devices to address this. Better to learn the immediate neighborhood by heart and save the GPS for uncharted waters.

[GQBlues]

 

Hubbies from now on may be better served to invest on a new Halt! Volvo's XC60...Of course, this may also exacerbate the situation and actually prove to be counter-productive.

[HiTech]

Alyona received a GPS for Christmas, Pryor to that time her driving was only very local, I.E. to grocery store ... all things withing 2 miles.

There is another thing that I learned from being a pilot about metal maps. If you have not driven a lot and only walked or by bus/metro, your metal map is in a completely different form than if you drive. With mass transit your map is very point to point, and will have no sense of direction.

Just as a different metal picture of mass transit/car when flying a new metal map appears. The skills you learned driving about navigation mean nothing in an airplane and the first 30 hours  you have no idea where you are or what direction with out looking at compass and map.

It takes a long time for your brain to adjust to 20 - 30 mile land marks the size of lakes and towns and not things the size of a road or building. So expecting your wife to learn directions the same as you would is not very realistic.

When Alyona started classes in January she had to commuting about 10 - 15 miles every day, we drove the roads 3 times but it was only the GPS that gave her some more confidence of not getting lost.

BTW if you are teaching your wife to drive, the one thing I forgot to do when starting that I did later was .

Rule 1.
When I am teaching you to drive you are not my wife but my student. You may NOT question what I tell you to do until after we have exited the car. This can head of some very serious heated debates when the debate itself can be dangerous.

[Gator]

RW AND MAPS!

I have observed that RW are terrible with maps.  Not my wife, but the countless RW with whom I was walking around Kiev, St. Piter, Rome, Bangkok, etc. 

If in their country, they preferred to just ask strangers for directions rather than look at a map I was carrying. 

If in a foreign land, when I asked them to study the map with me, they would give me the look of, "Why me?  You are the man.  Take care of it."

To echo HiTech, RW really had problems with repositioning our direction with the N-S orientation of a map.  If we walked only to the north, the RW had a fighting chance of being able to comprehend the map. 

These are smart women too.  Yet their inability was as bad as mine when walking with a map in Marrakesh and Fez (and I knew Arabic letters).  You will never understand that comment unless you have been there.

In contrast, my wife reads maps fluently.  She drove in Moscow for years and she would buy a new Moscow road map every few months because the traffic department would frequently change turns and one-ways.

[groovlstk]

It takes a long time for your brain to adjust to 20 - 30 mile land marks the size of lakes and towns and not things the size of a road or building. So expecting your wife to learn directions the same as you would is not very realistic.

When Alyona started classes in January she had to commuting about 10 - 15 miles every day, we drove the roads 3 times but it was only the GPS that gave her some more confidence of not getting lost.

I agree w/this in part, as I'd be on pins and needles if my wife went out driving w/out a GPS. However, I wish she'd learned to drive in a car w/out one as she's become entirely too dependent on it even for short trips to the supermarket - places that she would have committed to memory long ago had she not had the GPS as a crutch. If I were to do it all over again I'd make sure she had her basic bearings committed to memory (how to get to the nearest highways, Target, supermarket, etc. - all of which are 1/2 mile from our home) first.

[HiTech]

I wish she'd learned to drive in a car w/out one as she's become entirely too dependent on it even for short trips to the supermarket - places that she would have committed to memory long ago.

This I have not seen in Alyona, she only uses it if she is not sure of the route.

HiTech

[GQBlues]

Better to learn the immediate neighborhood by heart and save the GPS for uncharted waters.

My wife's sentiment exactly. She turned me down twice when I offered to fit her car with a navigator. Instead if and when she's going someplace for the first time, she'd use google maps and study it, then use the 'street view' feature to memorize what the place looks like from the street. She said that if and when she needs navigational tool, she pointed out that she knew enough to stop and find her position from her iPhone...

I gave up teaching my wife to drive and almost filed for divorce  before as she kept running over curbs everytime she had to turn right on a vacant parking lot. So instead I got her a certified teacher as it was cheaper than a divorce attorney. He picked her up the next day with a car that had two of everything (steering wheel, pedals..). When she got home and told me the experience, I was shocked that she drove all over the city and even on the freeways.

That's when I knew the problem was really me.