Well done Matthew, who passed first time today with just two driver faults. Much of the credit must go to his dad, who trained him initially, and he came to me to round things off.
An interesting bit of information out of this was that his insurance has gone up by about £450 just by moving from “learner” to “passed” status – and that’s with a policy which involves a black box.
I always warn my learners who pass to inform their insurer before they drive their car – if they don’t, they probably wouldn’t be covered if they were pulled over for any reason. Everyone else should bear that in mind – your insurance may well rise, but that’s the only option unless you want to drive illegally! When you look at it on a monthly basis, £450 is less than £40, so it isn’t that bad. And it beats getting points, possibly a ban, and a subsequent huge insurance increase as a result of that.
In Matthew’s case, the black box policy premium will probably come down again in three months times once he starts accruing good driving data.