How's your driving?

This set of Flash driving drills comes from pepere.org in France, created by Flash programmer JP. The stylish graphics reminded me of one of those motor vehicle safety manuals they used to pass out in school. Maybe they are coordination tests for driver permits? Oh, that's just plain silly. Anyways, each game requires you to steer your way to the objective using the arrow keys on the keyboard (right, left, forward, reverse) and the space bar for the handbrake.

• The first game has you parallel parking your vehicle at the curb of a street between two other cars. It's a race against the clock, and fender benders count against you. You may think this one looks easy, but in fact it's harder than it looks. Click.
• The next one has you driving on ice around a small track. Again, against the clock but don't run off the road, that also counts against you. Click.
• The third game puts you in charge of parking your trailer in a nice spot in the shade. Be careful not to cut the wheel too far. Click.
• And the fourth one puts you in a boat where you steer with the rudder to navigate around marked buoys in the water. Click.

All four games feature realistic physics in each of the different environments, and when finished you get to see a complete replay of your performance—the latter is probably the games' most redeeming quality, especially if you have a couple of people gathered around.

All of the games are short and simple to pick up and play. However, as noted before, these drills are not easy. The difficulty is due to the backwards thinking required when parking, backing up, or steering a boat: To move left, turn the wheel (or rudder) to the right. You get the picture.