The Daily Express is going all Daily Mail with this misinformed scaremongering session. It says:
A mandatory requirement for 120 hours of lessons could leave learner drivers footing a bill for £3,360 of lessons before even taking a test.
Some amateur hack with a calculator must have worked that one out. Shame they didn’t have a clue in the first place.
To start with, the number the hack came up with is based on an hourly lesson rate of £28 – and that’s in spite of someone in the article being quoted as saying average hourly rates are £18 (which would add up to £2,160). If instructors are charging £28 an hour in some areas, that’s what the market will stand, and it has no bearing on the rate charged in depressed areas because people there will not be paying £28.
Secondly, the proposals do not say that the entire 120 hours has to be with a driving instructor. Most learners have access to a car for private practice – many who never actually do any private practice still have access to a car if their parents would insure them. If the system changes, then so will the parents have to.
And finally, it will cost more in order to stop people killing themselves – no matter how that is achieved. Is that really as much of a bad thing as the Express and those it is quoting are making out? These lowlife hacks spend their lives whingeing about road deaths, and then oppose any plan to try and change it with rubbish stories like this one.