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Universal Driver's License: Difference between revisions
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{{quote| '''Captain Steven Hiller:''' [[Had the Silly Thing In Reverse|(after backing the craft into a wall)]] All right, let's try that again...<br />
'''David:''' [[Crowning Moment of Funny|Yes yes yes. Yes, without the "oops". (points forward) ]]''[[Crowning Moment of Funny|That ]]''[[Crowning Moment of Funny|way.]] }}
** Of course, the director's cut explicitly shows Steven learning to fly the craft, or at least sitting at its controls, long before he makes the offer to fly it; his confusion with the controls therefore stems more from [[Damn You, Muscle Memory!|not being used to them]] than outright ignorance. It's still a dangerous proposition, but not nearly as foolhardy as it comes off in the theatrical cut.
* By the end of ''[[Wild Wild West (Film)|Wild Wild West]]'', it appears that at least one of the heroes (probably [[Gadgeteer Genius|Artemus Gordon]]) has figured out how to drive a giant mechanical spider.
** Of course, to board said spider earlier in the movie they invented manned flight itself. So, yeah.
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* Lampshaded and averted in [[Hyperion|Endymion]] when Raul considers stealing a thopter from a fishing platform. He quickly dismisses the idea because he has no idea how to fly it. Raul notes that in the holodramas he has seen, the hero was capable of flying anything they could steal. Raul, on the other hand, had evidently "missed Hero Basic Training."
* In ''[[Artemis Fowl (Literature)|Artemis Fowl]]'', fish smuggler Doodah Day can allegedly drive any vehicle, be it human, fairy or otherwise.
* In Stanisław Lem's novel [
* Parodied in [[Samurai Cat]], where Miowara Tomokato is qualified to drive a laundry list of motorcycles, automobiles, airplanes, blimps, boats, jetskiis, and [[The Hunt for Red October|Typhoon-class submarines.]]
* Averted in [[Harry Turtledove]]'s Timeline-191 series. When Lucien Gaultier proudly shows his daughter Nicole his brand-new Chevrolet, she absoultely insists on driving it. Once she gets behind the wheel, she can't even turn it on, because the controls were nothing like her husband's Ford.
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** Though most of the Alien crafts piloted by Sheppard (ie: Puddle Jumpers, The Orion and Atlantis) are controlled by thought, you simply need to think what you want the ship to do, and it does it. Doesn't explain why they all have control sticks though.
*** Having something to do with their hands helps the pilots to focus their thoughts better.
* In the new ''[[
** Lampshaded when a frustrated Chief Tyrol is totally flummoxed as to how Starbuck could even get the gods-damn frakking thing to ''move''.
* This trope is used in ''[[Quantum Leap]]'' to introduce Al's role as observer in the pilot episode: he can show Sam which switches to flick and 'guides' his control inputs but admits that there's no way Sam can land a 1950s supersonic test plane even with holographic assistance, so Sam bails out. A later episode set in a plane above the Bermuda Triangle also showed that when 'The Triangle' (possibly) causes Al to disappear, then Sam still can't fly a plane without help.
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** Averted in the farming episode when it takes the hosts several minutes just to figure out how to start their new tractors.
* ''[[The Amazing Race]]'' takes full advantage of the fact that many people believe this trope to be [[Truth in Television]], making teams operate things like doubledecker buses, armored personnel carriers, and shipyard cargo cranes, as well as extending it to things like dogsleds and donkey carts. Count on at least one shot each season of a team member saying something like "How hard can it be?" just before they screw up royally.
* It seems like [[Doctor Who
** It's not just the Doctor. In {{spoiler|''The Curse of the Black Spot'', a 17-century pirate crew}} are flying an alien starship by the end of the episode. Earlier, when {{spoiler|the pirate captain}} first came aboard the TARDIS, he was able to figure out almost instantly what many of the controls were. When the Doctor looked at him in a bit of surprise, he shrugged and said, "A ship's a ship."
* Not as blatant in earlier [[Star Trek]] series, but it seems that a Starfleet helmsman can fly damn near any starship, whether he can read the display in front of him or not. (The same seems to go for ''any'' station--tactical, ops, whatever.), although they do have the Universal Translator; the only time it really stretches suspension of disbelief is when Archer does so in Enterprise.
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* ''[[Front Mission]]'' frequently depicts single characters piloting tanks, but this trope really comes into play for Front Mission 3. In this particular game, you have pilots capable of not only driving their usual [[Real Robot|Wanzers]], but they also apparently can pilot tanks, armored trains, helicopters, and [[Humongous Mecha|mobile weapons]] just as easily. [[Joke Character|One character]] even pilots a methane-powered pickup truck with legs.
* Pepper Roni, the main character of [[LEGO Island]] seems to be able to ride on anything from his stakeboard, boats, horses, motor bikes, desert cars, airplanes to a space shuttle. And he's just a pizza delivery boy.
* Played straight in ''[[Command and Conquer]]: Renegade''. There is an introductory tutorial to teach players how to drive and shoot using a vehicle, but heck, nobody needs that training to get started. A character can drive anything from a [[More Dakka|Hum]][[Fragile Speedster|vee]] to a [[Macross Missile Massacre|Multiple Launch Rocket]] [[Glass Cannon|System]] to a [[BFG|Mamm]][[Tank Goodness|oth]] [[Mighty Glacier|Tank]]. In certain deathmatch maps, this extends to piloting aircraft, too. And if it's campaign mode or driver-as-gunner multiplayer mode, he's a [[Crew of One]]. [[Memetic Mutation|And he can probably do it]] [[I Am Not Left
** Any ''[[Command and Conquer]]'' game with an explicitly given ability to hijack vehicles does this straight, well, for [[Acceptable Breaks From Reality|very obvious reasons]]. Massive AT-AT [[Expy]] with twin railguns? No problem!
* ''[[Mass Effect]]'' has the Hammerhead ([[Hover Tank|hover]][[Tank Goodness|tank]]) and Mako ([[Awesome Personnel Carrier|IFV]]), but given you almost always have at least one teammate at any given time, it's more likely that (for example) Shepard drives whilst Garrus operates the guns and Tali is watching the sensors/etc. In the one of the Lair Of The Shadow Broker missions, Shepard and Liara are chasing after a Shadow Broker agent in a hovercar, which Shepard is able to fly, albeit badly.
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** Humvees are automatic transmission, so it wouldn't be hard. It's most likely that he was simply never given the formal training to indicate that he was qualified for that specific military vehicle.
** Someone who had only driven civilian cars and [[SU Vs]] might find himself at a loss for how to start the Humvee, as the starter system makes perfect sense only AFTER it is explained to you. Incidentally, if anyone sends you to get keys to the humvee, unless there's a padlock involved somewhere, they're messing with you.
** If registered in European countries, Humvee is legally a truck ("motorized vehicle over 3500kgs loaded weight") and can be driven by anyone holding a truck license. Controls are not different from a 4x4 truck anyway. Some older military trucks are much more demanding - see the [
** The US Army M35 "Deuce and a half" truck similarly has some particular oddities about it, such as a gear shifter that LOOKED like the shifter in a normal car, but had the gears in all the wrong order. The shift pattern ''reverses itself'' halfway through. Going from 1st to 2nd to 3rd is a normal down-up-down motion, but going from 3rd to 4th is not back up again, it's over and ''down'' with 5th being up. Fortunately, it is typically "Army Proofed" by having the shifting positions posted on a metal plate riveted to the dashboard. You still drive the vehicle primarily with brute violence and foul language. Like the Humvee, it's got a starter system that is counter-intuitive to people used to keys, and there's no power assist for any of the steering or shifting. Hope you like grabbing big heaping handfuls of steering wheel and stomping on the clutch like it slept with your wife.
* Inverted, indirectly, by Ronnie Biggs of the so-called "Great Train Robbery"; he had one job to do, locating a train driver to move the mail train they were robbing. He managed to find one - one who ''couldn't drive the model of engine the mail train used''. In the end, confirming the trope (sort of) the rest of the gang managed to get the train into place.
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[[Category:Action Adventure Tropes]]
[[Category:Universal Drivers License]]
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