My wife put getting her drivers license on the side burner for a long time. She went to 2 cheap driving schools much to my chagrin and wasn't feeling any more confident in getting her license. She finally agreed to pay the premium and go through AMA.
She learned more in 45 minutes than she did at both those other places. She's often comments that she poured money down the drain by going to those other schools.
Cheapo schools might be a good way to get some practice in for slightly cheaper... but if you want to learn, it's hands down AMA. HOWEVER, if you go through an AMA driving course and just want more driving time for confidence before going for a test, additional lessons with an instructor are highly discounted if I remember correctly. For this reason, I really don't think it makes any sense to go through a cheapo school if you want to learn correctly. There's probably a few other really good schools, but AMA hands down is consistently good.
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Originally Posted by troutman
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I wonder if the issue is with how militant some of those instructors are. There's a ton of auto fails for certain things and it can be up to the tester to determine how serious the "offense" is for pass/fail. For instance, I failed my learners and GDL once each. I had the same ass of a woman testing me both times I failed (story below).
For my learners, I "ran the stop sign" because I regularly used a limousine breaking technique that was taught to me by my AMA instructor. She said she couldn't feel the jolt when I stopped so she looked to the side, saw the blade of grass move an inch or so she knew I wasn't at a completely full stop even though she admitted I was obviously not moving for at least 3-4 seconds. Semantically she'd compromise that I rolled the stop sign. Auto-fail because I ran a stop sign. Red lights? Gravel was kinda maybe moving for a few inches even though pedestrians were crossing and I obviously had to wait for them to get onto the sidewalk... same thing. Rolled/ran a red light, double auto fail.
I felt like I did worse the second time I was with her, but I somehow passed and got my GDL.
For my GDL, I wasn't happy to see her again at the Bowness/Crowfoot registry area, but OK, whatever. They ask you the hazard questions and whatnot and she made it a point to ask way more questions and interrupt me as I got close to a playground zone which I noticed slightly late due to being momentarily distracted... I slammed on the brakes but according to her, I might have been going 35 kmph at the moment I was parallel to the sign. She wasn't sure, but she was adamant I wasn't slower than the MAXIMUM 30 kmph for the playground zone. Aced everything else, but speeding even 1 kmph in a playground zone? Auto-fail. She also expected me to list every single potential hazard and if I missed one, she'd gleefully interrupt me to state the ones I missed (ie: empty cross walks or kids 10 feet away from the side walk). I wasn't sharp enough to tell her all of them, so she deducted a ton of points for stuff like that too.
We had a family friend who knew a guy who was a tester and he told me to go through him and the route this guy would take me on would be easier... dude told me that the only thing he could imagine dinging me on was that I was stopped at a stop sign slightly too long (doing it on purpose to show I was full stop) and I crept up to 108 kmph merging onto Deerfoot while chatting with him, but I caught myself and hit the brakes to slow back down to speed limit. He was very fair. He wasn't rubber stamping drivers licenses. The route wasn't significantly less difficult, but it had less concentrated "hazard" stuff like the route in Bowness. He commented I obviously drove better than the average person and I was probably doing slightly weird things to compensate for the previous fails.
He asked me who the previous tester was and was both surprised and apologetic I had the misfortune of getting that idiot 3 times. Apparently she had a reputation of failing students the first time for stupid reasons to essentially rake in testing fees for her registry. Many other testers apparently didn't like her.
Driving Schools. Who’s good these days.
