5 Reasons Being a Student Driver Is the Scariest Part of Your Teenage Years

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Fear factor: DEFCON 1
Survival tip: Stand your ground.

For student drivers, they're just little kids with hopes and dreams of getting the freedom of their driver's license. In order to do that, you have to follow the rules. For everybody else, student drivers might as well be a road block. That stupid cheese wedge on top of the car or bumper sticker on the rear is equivalent to a giant target. It seems like people will go out of their way to tailgate, honk, or speed by you, complete with a glare that would kill a small mouse. The fact that you are a new driver makes them feel like seasoned NASCAR professionals, and for some reason, they feel like that gives them the right to be dicks. 

Fear factor: Premature heart failure
Survival tip: Deep breaths.

For a good six months after you begin driving, parents will not trust any on-road decision you make. It can vary from them trying to grab the wheel to pressing an imaginary brake pedal. The worst is the whole ... "slow down, slower, stop, STOP, STAHHHP, OMG STOPPPP!!!!!!" sequence. You'd think you were murdering a baby or something. But the worst part is that they likely hold the future of your driving privileges in their hands. So you have to try to stay calm. Because if you are like, "SHUT UP, I KNOW," chances are you won't be getting to take the car out to the movies later on. 

Fear factor: Stomach-turning
Survival tip: Call out sick.

Anybody who has been through Driver's Education can tell you about the slideshow. It contained dozens of gruesome pictures of other kids who weren't safe drivers: showing cars wrapped around trees, headless people lying in the median, and what appears to be Halloween but is actually a man's face on the road. They're trying to scare you into driving by the rules. It works in scaring you, but, c'mon, everybody's going to break the rules in the beginning. 

Fear factor: Change of pants needed
Survival tip: Avoid rush hour like the plauge.

Where did all these cars come from? It felt like everybody was bearing down on you at about 250mph. In the community of driver's education teachers, that day is known as "Sphincter Day." You know those TV sequences when somebody is feeling claustrophobic and the room starts to turn and feel smaller and smaller, narrowing into a little tiny stripe? Well, this is the real life version of that. Except you have a guard rail on one side and some other pissed off driver on the other side who thinks you're trying to cut them off. 

Fear factor: Varying from fair to "oh my god we're going to die"
Survival tip: Distract yourself with smartphone games.

The Driver's Ed. instructor has his special brake pedal, but that's pretty much all when it comes to safety features. An extra foot on the brakes won't do much good when some ditzy 16-year-old steers the car right into the median at 65mph. Not all kids are as good at learning and following instruction as you. They also don't have the natural instinct for what it takes to get behind the wheel. Maybe it was that slideshow that made them such nervous wrecks.