Jenna Bush Hager revealed that it was a bumpy road learning how to drive.
The Today with Hoda & Jenna host, 42, shared on Thursday’s episode that she and her twin sister, Barbara Bush, were not the best drivers when they first got behind the wheel.
“My first year of driving, I had a little impulse control issues,” Bush Hager admitted on the show. “My brain developed a little later. So I would just put it on, get in the car, speed back, without ever looking back.”
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“So Barbara and I — and I’m not 100% sure this is the perfect number — but I’m pretty sure the two of us together got in 13 accidents,” she added.
The author noted that the number of accidents included “minor fender benders,” some of which “didn’t even require work done.” She reiterated to the audience, “I’m not a great driver.”
Guest host Willie Geist, 48, asked Bush Hager if she “got better with age,” to which she replied that she did have a more recent accident.
“I got in one total wreck in my one driveway of late,” adding that the car had been a “total loss” following that incident.
Geist shared that he, too, got into an accident once while driving his mom’s car during his senior year in high school. “Wet leaves, fall, maybe I was going a little too fast — but not crazy, because we didn’t get hurt. But I skidded and we totaled my mom’s car… into a tree,” he said.
Bush Hager recalled that she had a similar accident when she had tried to drive on “icy” roads in Texas.
“I had never heard of black ice. I didn’t know what would happen,” she said. “I hit it, I was going a little too fast too, spun into a tree too. But I wasn’t injured, we’re fine.”
This wasn’t the first time the daytime talk show host discussed her driving skills. In October, she opened up about her driver’s education, saying that the department of public safety taught her how to drive — not her parents, former President George W. Bush and former first lady Laura Bush.
“My parents weren’t allowed to drive at that stage,” Bush Hager explained to Kotb on the show, reminding that her dad was the governor of Texas at the time. Considering that a government agency administered her lessons, she added, "you would think I would be an excellent driver."
“I went to driver’s ed,” she continued. “Some boy threw me in the dumpster. Like, we were flirting, you know?"
Co-host Hoda Kotb, 59, shared that she also took driver’s ed and her parents, who were school teachers, were in the car with her when she first practiced driving in a parking lot.
