What should the average price of driving lessons be?

Well after another of my straw polls (quick search of the internet, and the forums), I reckon the cheapest you can get a driving lesson for is about £15 an hour. There's a couple of discounts involved in that price, but it's still too low.

And the most expensive? Outside London - £25/hour seems to be the highest I've found that isn't actually specialist training.

Something I've asked about before is why this is so low? We pay more for our kids to learn the guitar - and how high are the overheads on that?

So what has happened? Well the problem has always been that people can teach their own kids to drive - so why should they pay anyone else to? I can't play the guitar, so I can't teach my kids, but I can drive - and how hard can it be?

Well the problem with that logic is that playing the guitar badly can't kill your kids! (It might make you want to kill yourself, but that's another issue)

So what can we do to get the price back in line with reality, well, we could encourage the government to restrict personal freedom even more and insist that everyone goes takes professional lessons with an ADI (not keen personally). We could encourage some of the examiners who want to insist on tests being taken in dual control cars (but people can hire them for about £10 an hour).

Or we could make people aware of what it is we do, and we could encourage the DSA to grade instructors more transparently. We could work to make people understand exactly what they are paying for, and we could encourage people recognise the advantages of choosing an instructor who has experience, qualifications and skills relevant to what they want to learn.

A couple of relevant qualifications might be useful - maybe the DIA could run them as CPD courses, with easily recognisable certification:

Certified Confidence Builder - trained in specific techniques to help nervous learners
Certified Mature Driver Trainer - trained in specific techniques to help mature learners
Certified Aspergers/Dispraxic Trainer etc - trained in techniques specific to certain disabilities which should be no barrier to learning to drive.
Certified Language Trainer - able to train those whose first language is not English eg: Punjabi, Polish or even British Sign Language.

I'm sure some of you will be able to think up your own.

Wouldn't that be better than simply putting Dip DI (great course, but what exactly does it mean to the customers guys?) after your name.