Drive the 505

the problem

Learning to drive as an adult is a different problem from learning at sixteen. The information is scattered across a state handbook, a car manual, and whatever a well meaning person tells you in a parking lot, and none of it is organised around the thing that actually makes it hard, which is nerve rather than knowledge.

what I built

• Study modules across car knowledge, driving theory, New Mexico road rules and Albuquerque geography, each broken into topics you can mark as learned.
• Flashcards and quizzes per module, with scoring, explanations on wrong answers, and progress that persists between sessions.
• An interactive map of the city grid built as hand authored SVG, where tapping a road names it, with a quiz mode that asks you to find one.
• A first month plan that stages the terrifying parts in order, from empty side streets through to a highway merge.
• Choosing and buying a car, because the anxiety starts well before the driving does.

the design decisions

The palette is desert night rather than the usual driving app red and yellow, because the audience is anxious and warning colours are the wrong register. Progress is never framed as failure: a quiz you did not pass says review and try again, not you failed.

Everything is a single self contained HTML file with no build step and no dependencies, which is why you can download it and open it offline. That is a deliberate constraint rather than a shortcut. A tool for someone learning to drive should still work in a parking lot with no signal.

why it belongs in a marketing technology portfolio

Because it is the same muscle. The analytics dashboard and the deck generator exist because I can define a problem, design an interface, write the code and ship the result without waiting for a developer. This is that habit, on my own time, where nobody made me do it.