Surviving the Passenger Seat: The Ultimate Parental Stress Test Begins

There is a massive generational gap when it comes to getting a driver's license. As my oldest son starts his journey to become a legally licensed driver, I can't help but marvel at how drastically the process has changed.

If we look back to my parents' generation, getting a license was almost comical by today's standards. To confirm your suspicion: yes, they really did just get it. In Belgium, before 1977, there was no practical driving exam. You essentially walked into the local town hall, filled out some paperwork, and walked out legally permitted to hurl a two-ton metal box down the highway. We still have a saying here that people from that generation "got their driver’s license with a pack of butter."

Fast forward to today, and the process is a highly regulated, stress-inducing obstacle course.

The Theory Exam: Underestimating the Beast

Yesterday, my oldest son went in for his theoretical exam for the second time. His first attempt was fueled by self-study and a heavy dose of teenage overconfidence. Unsurprisingly, he failed.

This is where the modern rules hit your wallet: if you fail the theory test twice in Belgium, you are legally obligated to take 12 hours of official theory classes. To avoid that expensive fate, we changed our strategy based on recommendations from friends and booked a specialized crash-course day.

It cost us 100 euros. We dropped him off in the morning, he sat through an intensive class from 8:00 AM to 2:30 PM, and then the instructors drove the students straight to the exam center. The success rate for this route is supposedly huge. Thankfully, it worked like a charm—he passed!

It made me think back to my own theory exam. Back in my day, you bought a little physical booklet, highlighted the traffic signs, and just memorized it. There were no online practice exams or fancy simulators. I'm not even sure theory classes existed back then. And just to be fair to my son, I needed two tries to pass my theory exam back then, too.

The M36 Route and the Automatic Future

Now comes the real challenge: actually learning to drive. We’ve opted for the "M36" route. It's one of the less confusing codes in the Belgian system—the 'M' stands for months, and '36' is the duration. This means his temporary license is valid for 36 months. He has to practice for at least 5 months, and once he turns 18, he can finally take the practical exam.

The plan is to have him take a few hours of professional lessons to get the basics down, and then we will step in as his primary guides. Because we both drive Electric Vehicles (EVs), he is going to learn on an automatic. Consequently, he will receive an "automatic-only" license.

Years ago, showing up with an automatic-only license in Europe would have earned you some weird looks, as manual transmissions were the undisputed kings of the road. I remember stressing out, convinced I would never master the whole clutch-and-shift dance. Today, after driving an automatic for over 10 years, shifting gears manually feels like peanuts when I occasionally have to do it. But for my son, the EV revolution means manual driving is mostly a thing of the past. It’s practically a 50/50 split between manual and automatic learners now anyway.

Surprise! Homework for the Parents

There was just one tiny detail we forgot: we need to go back to school, too.

To act as a driving guide in Flanders, you are now required to take a 3-hour theoretical course to "prepare" you for teaching someone else. You can do this online or in a classroom. We had absolutely no idea the waiting lists for this were so incredibly long. Yesterday was an "all hands on deck" panic to find a spot. We finally managed to snag a classroom session for next Friday, about a 30-minute drive away. It’s not too bad, but it proves that sometimes, parents forget to do their homework too.

The Impending Passenger-Seat Panic

If I am completely honest, I am not ready for this. I am not ready to watch him navigate traffic, and I am definitely not ready to sit in the passenger seat trying to guide him.

I will probably morph into my own mother. I have vivid memories of learning to drive with her. I missed a priority-to-the-right situation once, and it resulted in screaming, sheer panic, pulling the car over to the side of the road, and an immediate switching of seats.

To mitigate the shouting, we’re going to let the professionals take him for the first 4 hours or so. Once he knows where the brake pedal is, we’ll start guiding him quietly—maybe let him drive us to away games for football.

It’s going to take some getting used to. Our current EVs aren't exactly small, city-friendly hatchbacks. And the car we have on order (a Polestar 4) is even wider. He won't just be learning to cruise down a straight road; he has to master maneuvers like parallel parking and reversing in a rather large vehicle. Luckily, the "hill start" is no longer a dreaded part of the exam. There's really no point anymore, considering almost every modern car has hill-assist or an automatic gearbox.

Exam Scalpers and "The Other Guy"

When he is finally ready, we have to prepare for the final boss: booking the practical exam. The current waiting times are up to 6 months. I kid you not. It has gotten so absurd that people are actually writing bots to automatically claim canceled time slots and illegally resell them online. It is a very weird world we live in.

I can't judge him too harshly if he doesn't pass on the first try, considering it took me two attempts to pass my own practical exam. Like any self-respecting young driver, I entirely blamed other road users for my failure.

I was at an intersection, waiting to turn left. The light turned green. I slowly rolled forward into the intersection. The first oncoming car (going straight) just sat there. And sat there. After what felt like an eternity, I thought, "Well, I guess I'll go then." The exact millisecond I hit the gas, the other guy decided to wake up and accelerate, forcing him to tap his brakes. Major fault. Exam over. In my stressed-out teenage brain, I had been waiting for 30 minutes. In reality, it was probably about 15 seconds.

The Wild West of the Right-of-Way

Before he hits the streets, we really need to sit down and explain the bizarre "priority to the right" rule.

For the international readers: in Belgium (and several other European countries like France with priorité à droite, or Germany with rechts vor links), if an intersection has no stop signs, yield signs, or traffic lights, the car coming from your right automatically has the right of way.

As crazy as it sounds now, this rule used to be even worse. In the old days, if the car coming from the right came to a full stop—even just to safely check the intersection—they lost their priority. You had to practically barrel through the intersection blind to maintain your right of way. Thankfully, they scrapped that addendum, but the core rule remains.

It still leads to hilarious, entirely gridlocked situations. When four cars arrive at a four-way intersection at the exact same time, from all four directions, nobody has priority. It instantly turns into a Wild West Mexican standoff, full of awkward hand waving and flashing headlights until someone finally dares to inch forward.

Add all of this to the sheer confusion of Belgian speed limits—which, after 30 years of driving, still baffle me depending on which regional border I've accidentally crossed—and we have quite the journey ahead.

These will undoubtedly be interesting times. The father-son relationship is about to be thoroughly tested in the cramped confines of a wide EV. Wish us luck!

Cheers,
Peter