Learning to drive is an exciting milestone in life. Passing your driving test brings a newfound sense of freedom and independence. However, becoming a competent driver that is safe on the roads takes time and practice. Many factors influence how many driving lessons it takes to learn, but the average is around 40-50 hours of instruction.
When comparing potential Approved Driving Instructors, book an initial 2 hour assessment lesson with your top choices. This gives you first-hand experience with their tutoring approach to inform your hiring decision. For friendly instructors helping turn nervous beginners into skilled, safe drivers, try Quails in Wirral.
Getting Started with Driving Lessons
Once you turn 17 years old, you can legally start taking driving lessons with an approved driving instructor (ADI) in the UK. Your instructor will guide you through everything you need to know to pass both the theory and practical driving tests.
During your initial driving lessons, your instructor will:
- Teach you the basic vehicle controls, including:
- The gas and brake pedals
- Using the clutch and changing gears
- Adjusting mirrors
- Operating the indicators and windscreen wipers
- Steering and road positioning
- Introduce key driving skills like:
- Moving off and stopping smoothly
- Changing gears correctly
- Maintaining proper control of the car
- Cover the basics of UK road signs, rules, and markings
- Assess your current driving abilities
- Create a structured learning to drive plan based on your progress
These first lessons focus on getting you comfortable behind the wheel and ensuring you can control the car. As your skills improve, you’ll advance to more complex driving situations like busy roads, motorways, and night driving. Your instructor sets the pace of your lessons to match your abilities.
How Many Driving Lessons Are Needed to Learn Properly?
Most people take 40-50 hours of professional driving tuition before they are ready to attempt their practical driving test. However, there are many variables that affect how quickly people learn to drive, including:
Your Natural Aptitude for Driving
Some students have good coordination and quickly get the hang of operating a car. For others, it takes longer to become comfortable controlling the gas pedal, gears, steering wheel, and other functions all at once. If you’ve had previous experience riding bicycles or operating farm equipment, that can help your coordination and transition to driving.
The Frequency of Your Lessons
Taking regular lessons, such as two per week, allows you to reinforce what you’ve learned and progress faster. Infrequent lessons may require covering the same material repeatedly to refresh your memory from past lessons.
Access to Additional Practice
Students who get extra practice between lessons, such as in a friend or family member’s car, tend to perform better during professional instruction. This additional time behind the wheel helps polish and master essential driving abilities.
Your Instructor’s Teaching Style
Having an encouraging yet strict ADI helps you develop good driving habits from the start. However, being too critical or progressing too rapidly can also impede learning for some students. An instructor experienced in teaching new drivers is vital.
The Local Driving Test Centre’s Pass Rate
Some test centres have much higher first-time pass rates than others. Your instructor knows which test centres have more difficult routes and traffic situations so they can prepare you accordingly.
On average, plan for 40-50 hours of lessons over a 6 to 9 month timeframe. However, it could take more or less time depending on your skills. Be patient with yourself and don’t try to rush through the learning stages too quickly.
The 4 Key Stages of Learning to Drive
Driving lessons generally focus on 4 primary skill stages:
Stage 1: Vehicle Control
This stage covers the mechanics of operating the vehicle smoothly. Key skills include:
- Using the clutch and changing gears
- Coordinating the clutch, accelerator, and brakes
- Steering and managing the car’s controls at slow speeds
- Reversing, parking, and perfecting clutch control
Expect 5-10 hours focusing on vehicle basics until the functions feel like second nature. Having a good grasp of technical skills gives you confidence behind the wheel.
Stage 2: Developing Good Driving Habits
Once you’ve mastered clutch control, it’s time to apply that skill on the road. Key skills include:
- Moving off and stopping safely in traffic
- Changing gears correctly while driving
- Following the speed limit, traffic signs, rules of the road
- Maintaining proper road position around turns, at junctions and roundabouts
- Developing good observation abilities and reacting appropriately
This stage involves 15-20 hours spent driving on quiet roads before tackling busier areas. Your instructor helps identify and correct any bad habits immediately so they don’t become ingrained.
Stage 3: Practising Driving Skills
After building essential road skills in low risk areas, lessons shift to more realistic driving situations. Key skills include:
- Urban areas with parked cars, traffic lights, pedestrians
- Rural country roads with sharper turns, hills, animals
- Major A-roads and motorways with higher speeds and more vehicles
- All weather conditions including rain, darkness, fog, snow
- Route planning and independent driving
Spend around 15 hours getting extensive supervised practice in these challenging settings until you feel confident responding appropriately. This experience prepares you for independent driving.
Stage 4: Mock Tests and Final polish
In the last 5-10 hours of lessons, focus drills down even more. Key skills include:
- Taking mock driving tests with your instructor playing “examiner”
- Reviewing any problem areas that still need improvement
- Ensuring you can drive without direction or prompting
- Building precision with your manoeuvres like parking, 3-point turns, emergencies
- Cementing good observation and judgement
These final lessons give you a taste of how prepared you are for your real practical test. They also help identify lingering weak spots for extra practice.
How Many Driving Lessons Per Week Are Ideal?
Booking driving lessons once or twice a week is typical. This gives you time to practice what you’ve learned while not creating scheduling challenges. Here’s a breakdown of the pros and cons of various lesson frequencies:
Only 1 Lesson Per Week
- Pros: More flexibility week to week. Easy to fit around your schedule and budget.
- Cons: Slower skill development since there are long gaps between lessons. More review of past material needed each time. Higher risk of developing bad habits between lessons that then must be corrected later.
2 Lessons Per Week
- Pros: Enables good continuity so you efficiently retain what you covered in previous lessons while steadily progressing. Avoids the “two steps forward, one step back” problem.
- Cons: Makes scheduling regular lessons somewhat more challenging. Limited flexibility if you need to reschedule a lesson sometimes. Can get mentally fatiguing having so much time behind the wheel.
3-5 Lessons Per Week
- Pros: Accelerates your qualification process significantly, vital if you have an urgent license deadline. Immerses you in intensive driving skill development. Reduces overall cost of tuition over time.
- Cons: Much harder to fit in this higher lesson frequency long term due to time commitments. Risk of mental overload or burnout. Very inflexible schedule. Requires a bigger budget for the driving instruction.
Ultimately 2 lessons weekly over a 6-9 month timeframe works well for most new drivers. This enables good continuity and skill building without being overly demanding timewise or financially. Some intensive drivers do daily lessons for 1-2 weeks leading up to their test date if they started learning later and are crunched for time.
Tailor your lesson schedule to your personal constraints and how quickly you want to pass. Just realise more total hours of instruction generally produces better, safer drivers in the end.
How Much Are Driving Lessons in the UK?
- The average per-hour cost for driving instruction ranges from £20-£30. However, more rural areas typically charge less while large cities like London cost more.
- Block booking 10+ lessons usually gives per-hour discounts. Buying lesson “packages” with a fixed number of hours upfront can also save money.
- Your age, desired transmission (automatic vs manual), and instructor’s car model can also affect driving lesson pricing somewhat. Manual transmission instruction costs a little less on average.
- Budget approximately £1,000-£1,400 total for the complete learning process including test fees and any retakes if necessary. Costs reach £2,000+ for some intensive courses cramming all lessons into a short timeframe.
Saving up in advance for driving lessons and building time into your schedule for consistent weekly time slots are wise strategies. This reduces financial pressure during what can be a lengthy learning period spanning many months.
Some student driver insurance companies exist which provide discounted insurance for learners to gain supervised driving practice outside of normal lessons. Taking advantage of this extra road experience with a family member’s car in between professional lessons accelerates skill improvement.
How to Choose the Right Instructor for You
Selecting the right ADI driving instructor for your personality and learning style impacts your success. Avoid an instructor mismatch that could slow your progress. Useful selection criteria include:
- Driving Test Pass Rates
- Examine their 1st-time practical test pass percentages compared to local averages
- Teaching Experience
- Newly qualified instructors under 3 years’ experience often use lower pricing to attract students initially
- Very seasoned instructors with 10+ years’ experience usually produce better drivers but charge higher hourly rates
- Driving Instructor Grades
- Most instructors display badges indicating if they meet standards for the DIA’s Blue, Green or Red grade instructor registers which signals high quality instruction
- Car Models and Transmission
- Manual transmission vehicles have a clutch requiring an extra pedal control to learn
- Modern small cars have improved visibility, comfort and simplicity for new drivers
- Gender
- Some students feel more comfortable initially with an instructor of the same gender
- Reviews
- Check Google reviews and the DVSA feedback website for instructor ratings, complaints
Top Reasons Students Fail the Practical Driving Test
Understanding the most frequent reasons learner drivers fail the practical test helps you avoid those same pitfalls. Test failures usually relate to:
- Observation errors: Not noticing pedestrians, missing oncoming vehicles when turning, poor blind spot checks before manoeuvres
- Junction blunders: Misjudging speed on roundabouts, hesitating at intersections, turning errors
- Loss of Control: Harsh braking, stalling, rolling back on hills, mounting the curb
- Fails to Yield Right of Way: Pulling out when unsafe, not letting pedestrians cross, ignoring other vehicles’ signals
- Poor positioning: Straddling lanes, extensive over/undershooting turns, not keeping up with traffic flow
- Aggressive Driving: Excess speed, racing to beat traffic signals, riding the bumper of other cars
These mistakes stem from impatience, nerves, lack of preparation and insufficient driving practice during lessons. While one small error doesn’t automatically make you fail, repeatedly demonstrating risky behaviours does. Drive calmly, precisely and defensively during your test.
Passing the Theory Test Is Critical Too
To qualify to take your practical driving test, you must first pass the theory exam demonstrating essential knowledge. Theory test failure accounts for 41% of all test failures. Key theory exam tips:
- Study intensively using online practice tests or apps until scoring at least 85% consistently
- Schedule your theory test only once fully prepared to avoid losing time and money retaking it
- Refresh your highway code and theory knowledge periodically through lessons
- Ensure a strong grasp of sign meanings, penalties, alcohol limits and other rules
- Don’t leave study until the last minute since the multiple choice questions require deep familiarity
Ideally, pass your theory test 1-2 months before your practical test date. This gives time to cement driving abilities without that assessment pressure looming.
How Many Driving Lessons Are Needed After Failing?
The average driver fails their first practical test, with only 43% passing initial attempts. After failing your driving test, simply continue lessons working on the problem areas the examiner highlighted.
- Most students pass second or third attempts after an additional 8-10 hours of targeted training.
- Extend your learner driver insurance and focus practice where you struggled during the test.
- Continually attempt mock tests with your instructor until achieving solid passes consistently beforehand.
It’s extremely rare any student needs over 60 total lesson hours before eventually passing their test. Unless you have an exceptional situation or special needs, persisting beyond 60 hours becomes very costly without significant benefits. Not being ready in time for your first test is disappointing but completely normal – just keep practising.
When Are You Test Ready?
Determining true test readiness relies heavily on your instructor’s judgement and mock driving exam performance. But in general, you’re prepared for your practical driving test if you:
- Pass practice tests with your ADI consistently with few or no driving faults
- Feel confident driving unassisted on all types of roads and in varied traffic conditions
- Receive endorsements from your instructor that your driving is consistently at test standard
- Have significantly reduced your concentration lapses and serious faults
Attempting your test too early before your abilities are polished risks failing and wasting time and money retaking tests later. Driving tests cost over £60 currently, so avoid needing repeats by being honest with your instructor about your confidence levels and following their recommendations.
With diligent professional lessons coupled with determination on your part navigating all the learning stages, soon you’ll have the amazing freedom that comes from passing your driving test! So try Quails in Wirral for top-quality lessons from friendly instructors helping turn nervous beginners into skilled, safe drivers.