Driving Lessons - Lots of questions.

rev_henry

DaveF327 wrote: »

Extremely unlikely as driving school cars have dual controls and any supervising driver should take action before a collision. That said, any instructor worth his salt would be sure his pupil was competent (from practice elsewhere) that he could control the car before even attempting a manoeuvre next to a real car.

Hence why insurance for learners is often cheaper than once they've passed...
Also I was always taken to an empty corner of the car park to do bay parking as I remember.

Coveredinbees!!!!

Mark_Hewitt wrote: »

Insurance for learners usually isn't too bad, as they will always be supervised of course.

My sister wanted to put her 17 year old son on to her policy so she could take him out, they wanted an extra £250 per month, that on an 01 focus. Needless to say she isn't.

mikey72

Coveredinbees!!!! wrote: »

My sister wanted to put her 17 year old son on to her policy so she could take him out, they wanted an extra £250 per month, that on an 01 focus. Needless to say she isn't.

Try
http://www.collingwoodannuallearners.co.uk/WD120awp/WD120awp.exe/CONNECT/AnnualLearners

or
http://www.provisionalmarmalade.co.uk/

Paul1_2

My son passed his test at 17 with very few lessons, mind he drove in fog, ice, snow and rain so had a fair bit of experience in the process. We insured him via Young Marmalade while he was learning and that worked very well.

Now the issue, as a newly qualified 17 year old it would have cost £2.5K to add him to my insurance or 5.2K to insure him to drive a Ford Ka woth £1200! For the last 7 months he hasn't driven, but on his 18th birthday the cost of insuring him on our insurance drops to £280 for 7 months. Not sure how that makes him safer, but the insurance companies seem to think it is.

With hindsight he would have been better keeping his provisional till he was 18.

Evilm

Paul1 wrote: »

With hindsight he would have been better keeping his provisional till he was 18.

It probably relates to the fact he has had his license for over 6 months rather than his age.

DaveF327

rev_henry wrote: »

Also I was always taken to an empty corner of the car park to do bay parking as I remember.

That's how I started teaching it. Then when they were really good at it, I took them to a space in between two parked cars (even expensive prestige cars) and made them park perfectly in between them both from the left and right. It highlighted the need for absolute perfection in the real world and the fear of going near a Porsche or Merc AMG made them incredibly accurate at the manoeuvre before they went anywhere near a test centre.

Rest assured, not a single car was touched during the 10 years I used to teach in car parks.

Mankysteve

dug123 wrote: »

Nowadays it all looks so different I hear of people having 40 lessons:eek:
I know it is not really in the driving instructors interest for you to pass your test (they lose a customer) but I wondered how many lessons should I budget for?

If there a good instructor then they'll have plenty of queuing clients so that's not usually a worry. I would budget for 40hours he'll proberly be done by then but it'll give a nice margin of error.

The thing is have you looked have insurance costs? for a 17 year old lad it's horrendous who going to pay for that?

crittertog

dug123 wrote: »

I know it is not really in the driving instructors interest for you to pass your test (they lose a customer) but I wondered how many lessons should I budget for?

According to the DSA, the average "experience" of a driver when passing a test is 45hrs of lessons and 20hrs of private practice. I don't know if this is on the high side, due to people taking their test too early, and then having a bit wait for the re-test - the "1st time" pass-rate at the test centre I took my test at was 12%, with an overall pass-rate of 42%.