Do You Drive Home on your First Driving Lesson?

Whether or not you drive home on your first driving lesson depends on a few things such as:

• Sufficient progress made on the first lesson
• Your ability to drive
• Complexity of roads on the way home
• Your confidence

Sufficient Progress Made on the First Lesson

On your first driving lesson, the instructor needs to explain and run thorough each stage of the car cockpit drill with you. You’ll need to understand how to do this so that you can carry out the cockpit drill by yourself at the start of each consecutive driving lesson.

After this, your instructor needs to run through the car’s controls, from hand, foot and auxiliary controls. All of this must be completed before you can attempt to drive the car. The first driving lesson is usually two hours and is usually sufficient time to cover these topics and to have a drive at the end. If you’re learning to drive an automatic car, you’ll not have clutch control or gear changing to learn, so that will help to speed up progress.

Your Ability to Drive

Whether you get to drive home also depends on your ability to drive. Some learner’s ability to drive is naturally better than others, so if the instructor thinks you’re capable of driving home on your first lesson, they’ll let you.

Some learners also come to their first driving lesson with limited previous experience. They may have driven around a car park with a parent for example. Though it may not be much, any driving experience is usually beneficial and will likely gain confidence in the instructor’s decision for your driving home.

Complexity of Roads on the Way Home

Driving instructors always take learner drivers to a quiet residential area for their first driving lesson. If you happen to live in such an area or close enough that it doesn’t require driving on busy roads with complicated junctions, then it’s possible you could drive home.

Your Confidence

Finally, it’s also about your confidence to drive. If you display good control of the car and are confident in your ability, there’s every chance you could drive home on your first driving lesson, provided the other criteria has been met.