At least where I live, the licensing test covers rules of the road, not automotive knowledge. I think this commenter was referring to some test covering very surface-level knowledge of vehicles, with a focus on ways to tell if a car is unasafe to drive.
I’m in Sweden, we get two big books of just theory stuff. There are entire sections on how deep the patterns must be, when you are allowed to use what type of tyres (summer, friction, studded), etc. along with what consequences there are.
You must have winter tyres between the 1st of December and the 31st of March, so long as there may be snow or ice on the roads. Studded tires are only allowed between the 1st of October through to the 15th of April as they wear down the roads and cause excessive pollution.
There is so much general car knowledge. Warning lights, optimal tyre pressure (which is variable depending on your car and the load), how to drive in an eco-friendly manner, child seats, it never fucking ends.
Or, alternatively, we should build cities where owning a car isn't a requirement to hold down a job, and keep piloting a two ton death machine as a privilege, not a right
Jesus, at $20/mo you would pay for a full set of the (expensive) OEM tires on my car in less than a year. They're warrantied for 3 years of standard mileage, so even worse than double.
I got my license in Sweden and there are laws for when you must have summer tires and winter tires as well as how deep the pattern needs to be. This is all covered in the writing portion of the test. It's quite possible that someone driving with wheels like that might get their license suspended at the least.
us Americans, we seem to like to swerve deftly around many such useful civil universalities.
things you'd assume are vital to a peaceful, comfortable, safe people are often things that seem to baffle us.
i think this repeated swerving should disabuse anyone of any notion of the USA being a civilized nation, but somehow people keep classifying us as better than we are. lived here my whole life... not sure how someone could make that mistake, honestly. not unless they were really rich, I guess.
One big part is because of Hollywood. The entire world image of America comes from movies.
Once you start to look into the prison system, the justice system, the financial system.... Well, nothing actually builds on any feeling of caring about its citizens at all.
Brakes on cars are a hydraulic system. The check is for the fluid levels of the hydraulics. Without enough fluid, pressing the brake pedal would not depress the pads.