I taught my son to drive. Did a bit of research, downloaded a good app to plan lessons and just got on with it. We live next to the village hall with a good sized carpark, so started on there just getting used to controls and steering. Then moved onto roads. Within a couple of weeks he was driving too and from school in rush hour through city traffic. Since this was the main reason for learning to drive I thought the earlier he started practicing this journey the better.
I made him drive every where and after picking him up every night from school we would drive around the city for an hour so he could become familiar with possible test routes. Particularly the area around the test centre.
He took his test after 3 mnths and failed on a simple parking judgement error ( used by the examiners to catch them out) when he pulled up onto a curb on a street where all the cars were parked on the curb. It didn’t help that he parks his car on the curb outside our house ( very rural). He retook the test 2 weeks later and sailed through.
I tried to find an instructor but it was 2022 when there were long waiting lists for both lessons and tests. It might not be for everyone and maybe my job allows me to cope better under the pressure. The one thing I did impress on him was that I would still take him out regularly to continue teaching him. He has done a lot of motorway driving and living rurally he has plenty of daily experience of country roads.
From experience formal lessons are fine but hours behind the wheel are more important. Once they have a few lessons under their belt the more practice they get the more they are likely to experience all scenarios.
One morning on the school run we stopped at temporary traffic lights and the lights just switched off. My son turned to me and asked what to do. It had never happened to me so since we could the road ahead I suggested he treated the road works like parked cars and moved round them when the road ahead was clear.
It certainly allowed me to brush up on my driving skills and saved us a lot of money.
The only accident he has had was with me in the car. He had to stop suddenly when a car in front stopped suddenly. He had left room and avoided hitting the car but unfortunately the car behind us was not paying attention and hit us from behind at speed. Fortunately it didn’t shunt us into the car in front.
The accident just reinforced the need not to tailgate and to pay attention. Also how to deal with an incident calmly and without implicating yourself.
We also made him change a wheel so he knew what to do.