Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for June 26, 2024

Scarier yet: most of the stuff a good driver needs to know and do isn’t in the manual or on the test.

My first thought before I even started to read: “What! Zonker has a driver’s licence??”

Will Zonker’s inevitable arrest for driving without a license cause Boopsie to miss her TV audition? Stay tuned, folks!

“Why do there have to be rules of the road? All rules have ever done for me is slow me down.”

My rule of thumb for driving: Expect everyone around me to do the absolutely stupidest thing possible at any given moment. I’m seldom surprised.

You’ll learn things like Right of Way, then forget it as soon as you hit the road

Other people have suggested that everyone be required to retake the test every five years.

Hands on the wheel, Zonker!

He may be as sovereign a citizen as ever lived; human laws don’t apply to him.

The rules for safe driving are the same as a wilderness tracker. Know how everything is supposed to look and watch anything that is different.

If you can survive 600 miles on a motorcycle, you can be a safe (defensive) driver for life. As a motorcycle dealer once told me, Ride as if you’re invisible. The same goes for cars.

Classic Zonk!

I knew a guy who wasn’t very bright. He had to take Wisconsin’s very straightforward written test 5 times before he got the required minimum 75% of the answers right, and I’d have laid odds he was already back down to 70% the moment he walked out the door. And headed lower. But that sufficed to get him a license that was good for the rest of his life, during which interstate highways, pedestrian-crossing lights, roundabouts, turn bays, bus lanes, and other innovations were added to the mix of things he knew nothing about.

My first thought at reading panel 1 was Zonker has a drivers license?

You don’t need a license to drive but you do need a license to get caught. Get a license.

Took some searching — but check out the February 5, 2017 Doonesbury for Sam’s driving future!

https www gocomics com doonesbury 2017/02/05 (Need to add the punctuation)

Remember when defensive driving meant, Be cognizant of what the other drivers are doing? Now it’s, Remember: They may be armed.

The five scariest words a child can say to a parent: Can I borrow the car?

There are several shows on YouTube streaming that are about, well, idiots in cars.

It’s OK. Zonker is as good a driver as most of the ones with a license.

Years ago, I took my girlfriend for her driver’s test. The officer testing her went very easy. (Because she was a girl? We’ll never know.) When I offered to let her drive home, she said, “No way! If that’s all the testing the other drivers had to go through, I don’t want to be driving on the same road with them.”