My life

Price of driving

The price of learning to drive and getting yourself on the road is quite incredible. I don’t know about you but if you were like me at the age of 17 you didn’t have the money to take lots of driving lessons. According to the BSM website an hour of instruction time costs £24.75 in my area and according to the directgov website it take ‘on average, about 45 hours of professional training combined with 22 hours of private practice’ to pass the test. That means professional lessons alone would cost you £990, not to mention the cost of petrol for your private lessons and the cost to book both your theory and practical tests (another £93, unless you have a weekend test and then its more).

So you’ve scrapped together enough money to pass; now you need to get your hands on some wheels. I was lucky when I passed; my mum lent me her car, but I was the first one of my friends to pass, so I became designated driver and unfortunately that stuck. I ended up needing the car more and more and I realized I needed one of my own. Again I was lucky, my dad stepped in and brought me a little Citroen AX it certainly wasn’t the coolest car on the road, but it was all mine and I loved it.

Then the big costs started rolling in, remember I’m still 17 at this time, still at sixth form with only a part time weekend job. Petrol, road tax, MOT, RAC and maintenance all cost big time. These are all things I still have to pay today but when you’re young, these bills hit hard. 

The back breaker is the insurance. I understand why the insurance for a young male is high; the reckless driving of the few ensured enough accident claims for compensation for the insurance companies to be wary and with the suing culture they have to worry about claims for whiplash compensation too now. These costs have caused many to use insurance fronting; this is where an experienced driver is the main driver on an insurance policy despite the fact that a new driver will be the one doing the majority of the driving. This practice has been made illegal but according to the law society is still prevalent, this in turn has caused many legal services departments to not deal with these kinds of issues.

My advice to anyone just learning to drive would be to save up your money and take public transport for a few more years. At 18 it’s no fun to be the designated driver anyway and its better to have the money to go to Alton towers with your mates than have no money and a car to maintain.