[dylan_the_dog]

Hi

does anyone know the cheapest place for driving lessons ?

[KarlRW]

Ask independant driving instructors, they tend to be slightly cheaper as they dont have to pay royalties to the large companies.


Karl

[RotHeissPfefferStreber]

Actually, Karl, the reason they are often cheaper is that they are desperate for work and are trying to undercut the big companies to get work.

Most instructors have to pay roughly the same each week to keep their car on the road (BSM excluded, as their franchise fee is very high). In total, the likes of The AA and BSM and Red only account for about 20% of all instructors on the road.

After everything is taken into account, a decent instructor with a full diary will be using between approximately £3-5 an hour on fuel. His car and advertising is likely to cost him another £3-5 per hour. So if he charges £25 an hour, he is earning as little as £15 an hour very roughly (with a full diary).

Now consider an instructor who only charges £15 an hour - he'll be earning less than the minimum wage, even if he has a full diary (which is unlikely). He will have to cut costs, and the easiest one is fuel - so less driving and more talking. The pupil will therefore end up taking more lessons, even if they stay with that instructor long enough to get to test (many go elsewhere, which is partly why these instructors don't have full diaries). If they then find a decent instructor, it will still have cost them more overall than it would have done if they'd gone with a decent instructor to start with.

This is not to say that all cheap instructors are rubbish. Even the ones who let you down might actually be good instructors - but they have undercut themselves so much they haven't got the right attitudes or aims anymore. Some of them ARE crap, though, so be careful.

A good pupil with a good instructor could go from beginner to test pass in anywhere between 25-35 hours (even less if they have a lot of private practice). If the pupil is one of the ones who could do it in 25 hours with a good instructor, a bad instructor might take 35 hours over it to try and make his money. And how does the pupil know? He doesn't.

The official national average number of hours it takes to learn to drive is somewhere between 40-50, and this includes private practice. Personally, mine tend not to take that many - I think the official number is skewed a bit by pupils being trained for longer than necessary as instructors aim for 40 hours (that average is not a prediction, just a measurement of what really happens).

The thing anyone looking for lessons has to remember is that you usually get what you pay for. If you go for the cheapest, don't be too surprised if you get the poorest quality.