My first car

Cars while an incredibly flexible mode of transportation, are also the least efficient way to move people at scale. I’m a big fan of public transport, I love trains, trams, ferries and even busses. And I totally believe it is possible to live a life without owning a car. But that life just won’t be convenient.

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During my childhood my father was based in Kyiv Ukraine, while mom and I were in Riga Latvia. And because my mom can’t drive, I didn’t really interact with cars in my day to day life. I was brought up on public transport. When dad was off work he’d drive us around Riga and all over Europe, so going somewhere by car was something special for me, not something part of the normal day to day routine.

This kind of thinking continued into my university years, as I moved to Australia when I was 17, I never learned to drive in Latvia, and I couldn’t learn in Australia either yet.

Getting a drivers license

In order to get a driving licence in Australia, specifically NSW, you have to go through quite a few steps:

1. Pass a driver knowledge test at Service NSW on a PC. (Required to be 16 years of age)
2. Receive a Lerner licence. This allows you to drive a car, but it has to be under supervision by a full licence holder.
3. Complete 120 hours of driving on your Ls. A log book must be filled out.
4. Pass a hazard perception test at Service NSW on a PC. (Required to be 18 years of age)
5. Pass a physical driving test with a Service NSW test instructor.
6. Receive a Red Provisional licence that allows you to drive alone up to 90km/h and has other restrictions. You must hold this licence for 1 year.
7. Receive a Green Provisional licence that allows you to drive alone up to 100km/h and has other restrictions. You must hold this licence for 2 years.
8. Receive a full unrestricted licence.

So for me, a foreigner with no relatives in the country, I had no way to complete 120 hours of driving. So what did I do? Well there is a fast pass, if you are 25 years old, you can skip Ls completely and go for Red Ps straight away. And that’s exactly what I did. I waited till I was 25 and booked all the tests for February 2018. There were 2 things I did before hand though.

1. I got a driving instructor and did about 20-30 hours of driving with him in various conditions to get some first hand experience driving
2. I bought a car! It may sound crazy, but I actually bought a car before getting a Red P licence. I used my car to drive with the instructor for most of the time

The Car I chose

So now I need to chose a car! There are so many brands at so many price points. What should I chose? Consulting with my dad while relaxing at the pool in a Sri Lankan hotel we discussed the key things that I need to decide on. What we agreed on was that I wouldn’t need a car to drive to work, only for travel out of Sydney for leisure. So instead of a car that was good for the city, I should focus on a car that can fit my friends, and their travel items: bags, tents, etc. Thus I went with an SUV. And I definitely wanted a new car, not a second hand one. A hand-me-down from my parents would be fine, but that was not possible with me being on a different continent and all.

Then the next most important thing for me was Apple CarPlay support. Right now, not many car manufacturers actually support CarPlay. So I had to eliminate a lot of strong contenders like Toyota and Mazda. In the end the car the fit the best for what I wanted and in the budget range I had was a Honda CRV (you can see it in the photo).

So now I have a car! Lets see how much I’ll be driving it around NSW.