I have schizoaffective disorder and a member of my family with a more severe form of the same disorder doesn't drive. Also, when I was 16 in high school, I had a hard time paying attention and had bad anxiety. As I have gotten older, I have taken anti-anxiety medications and I've tried 2 driving schools but never had anyone to teach me, my husband would teach me later on. At 35 I had been on and off social security disability, but I had 4 weeks of chronic migraines and then on and off again migraines and had to go back on disability and because I was out of work for over a year waiting for social security disability to approve me when they finally did, they gave me $9,000. Which I used as a down payment on a truck. I got a job working at Deseret Industries and they paid for me to go to a driving school.
When I bought my very own car, I was the happiest I have been in a long time, I was going to learn how to drive and not have to rely on the super slow bus or beg other people for rides, I could also go wherever I wanted when I wanted.
The first day of learning how to drive my husband took me to a church parking lot, and I drove laps around the middle. I remember how scared I was.
On Sundays, the Taylorsville SLCC campus is virtually empty, which makes it the perfect place to practice driving. It's like a giant parking lot with lots of parking spots also it has a road that laps around the whole campus I used to drive lots of laps it really helped me become comfortable and less scared.
It took about 3 months of parking lot practicing before I was finally ready for the open road. but I do remember an annoying train on the road of 5600 w, from one of my old jobs. I got stuck behind it one day when I was practicing driving in the area, but I wasn't unhappy about it. Now that spot has an overpass.
After I had been driving for about 2 years I had an accident. I was going through a yellow light, at an intersection when an impatient woman turned in front of me, and I hit her. Several witnesses said I ran a red light, but I have no memory of that light being red. Thanks to Chrysler engineering I opened the door and walked out without a scratch. But I was devastated because my beautiful truck had been destroyed. I don't know what happened to the women I hit though. I still have really bad PTSD when I drive and have a hard time with intersections or anyone who looks like they might cut me off. It's getting better.
I named my brown truck Rammy, because he was a Dodge Ram 2500; year 2010, hemi. I was devasted after I crashed him, but my insurance paid for me to purchase another truck. The photo above is what I like to think of as his funeral. It was when we took stuff out of him at the holding yard. My husband is happy because he knew we were getting another truck.
The brown truck, had low mileage and was much higher quality than the Dodge Ram 2500 2014, which I bought that had high mileage and came with a $6000 repair. But I have fallen in love with this white one. I named him Raminilla.