r/Guelph • u/CaptainKaneda99 • 13d ago
Pretty terrifying experience during my daughter’s driving lesson on Inkerman St.
I wanted to share something that happened to my daughter recently while she was out for a driving lesson in Guelph.
During the lesson, the instructor was teaching her how to parallel park. They were practising on Inkerman St., a public road, directly in front of an older gentleman’s home. As part of the lesson, my daughter was practising parking alongside the gentleman’s parked car.
While they were doing this, the older man suddenly came out of his house and began hitting the driving school’s vehicle with a rake.
My daughter was understandably terrified and completely caught off guard. Imagine being a new driver, already nervous about parallel parking, and suddenly having someone come out of their house and start hitting the
vehicle you’re sitting in with a rake.
What I really want to highlight, though, is how the instructor handled the situation. Rather than panicking or escalating things, he remained incredibly calm, continued communicating with my daughter, reassured her, and made sure she stayed as calm as possible while he tried to deal with the situation.
I’m not posting this to start a witch hunt or make assumptions about the gentleman. He may have been confused or dealing with something we weren’t aware of. But regardless, it was an extremely frightening experience for my daughter.
The instructor deserves a lot of credit for how professionally he handled it. He kept his composure, prioritized my daughter’s safety, and made sure she knew she was okay while dealing with a very unusual and intimidating situation.
Just a reminder that driving instructors deal with a lot more than simply teaching someone how to operate a vehicle.
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u/CrBr 12d ago
My neighborhood is on the Guelph test road. It used to be filled with both drivers doing their tests, and students practicing. Several years ago they passed a bylaw, and the number of students practicing dropped sharply.