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In about two months my son will begin driving lessons, and I've realized that I have no idea how to choose a driving school.
When I was a teen, drivers' education was offered through my high school. Three students would be squashed in the back seat while one would be up front with the instructor. But now, many schools don't offer drivers' ed, so parents must seek private courses.
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Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that car crashes are the leading cause of death for teenagers in the U.S. Per mile driven, drivers between the ages of 16 and 19 are four times as likely as adults to crash.
So a good driving course isn't a luxury, it's a necessity.
A typical driving-school package, which ranges from $300 to $500, includes about 30 hours in the classroom and six to 10 in the car, says Sharon Fife, president of the Driving School Association of the Americas, which is composed of owners of driving schools.
She suggests checking to see whether the school you are considering is a member of the Better Business Bureau and whether there have been any complaints.
The problem with some schools is not so much with the skill of the driving instructors, but the minimal amount of time most students actually have behind a wheel before getting their driver's license.
Tips for choosing a school
AAA makes these suggestions in its brochure "Choosing a Driving School: A Guide for Parents of Beginning Drivers":
- Ask friends about the schools they used and find out what they liked or didn't like. Call several schools to compare programs and pricing.
- Find out about additional costs on top of the price of lessons, such as fees for missed lessons and cancellations.
- Ask how many fully licensed instructors work at the school. A good ratio is 30 students to five instructors, which allows enough time for students to complete the training in about 12 weeks.
- Visit the school to see how the classrooms look and the appearance of the cars.
- Check whether the school has an in-car curriculum. The instructor should have a lesson plan to follow with each student.
"There are driving schools all over the world that we call road-test mills," says Kerry Donnelly, assistant manager of AAA Driver Training, a drivers' education school in New York. "If you drive around the block 10 times and parallel park, you can pass the road test. It's not about that. It's about safety."
Phil Berardelli, author of the 1996 book "Safe Young Drivers," says most schools offer "six to 10 hours behind the wheel, but kids need at least 100 hours of supervised instruction just to be decent novice drivers." AAA suggests that beginning drivers have two lessons a week to reinforce what they've learned in class.
While not all parents look forward to spending 100 hours cooped up with their teenager, all experts agree that parental involvement is a must. Don't expect to drop off your children at a school and have them emerge fully trained.
Melinda Patrician, a mother of two in Arlington, Va., required each of her children to do 1,000 miles of supervised local driving before taking their driving tests.
"It's not as difficult as it sounds, and during that time you come upon all the things they're likely to encounter while driving," she says. "I brought them to every really bad intersection and merge that I could think of, and had them negotiate them multiple times. As they got better, we listened to the radio and chatted, because I knew they would be doing that when they started driving."
There are few things in life that our children are going to do that are as dangerous as driving, yet because most of us do it -- and learned so long ago -- we tend to think it's easier than it is.
"You don't take your child for piano lessons and expect to have a concert pianist in six months," Donnelly says. "Yet parents have unrealistic expectations about driving."
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