Driving lessons and car insurance for your child's birthday
Despite what many youngsters may think, most parents can remember being young and certainly remember the excitement they felt when they first got behind the wheel of a car. It is quite common for mums and dads to pay for their children to have driving lessons as a 17th birthday present so looking for a decent driving school is a task that faces a lot of people every year. Something else that needs to be arranged before your child can start practising their driving skills is insurance of course and there are a couple of ways of going about this. Some brokers sell special policies for learners which cover them in a particular vehicle or it is often possible to add them to your existing policy.
If a car is being bought as well then you may want to see if your local driving school are willing to use it when teaching your son or daughter although it is more normal for an instructor to use their own vehicle as they are usually fitted with dual controls. This gives the instructor the ability to apply the brakes in an emergency if it looks like his pupil is getting into trouble. A new policy has the advantage of not affecting your no claims bonus should your child have an accident whilst learning but adding them to your existing cover can be the cheaper option so you will have to weigh up the pros and cons when deciding which type of car insurance will be most suitable. The first thing to check when choosing a school is that all the instructors are fully qualified and it might also be a good idea to find out how many years of experience they have.
Many girls prefer to be taught by a woman so if the lessons are for your daughter then this is something else to bear in mind. Some parents decide to take on the job themselves but this does not always work out very well. Once the test has been passed your child is going to want to drive all over the place and if you have decided to buy them a cheap car in which to do so, it will be necessary to buy a separate policy to cover them whilst driving this vehicle. Many driving schools offer additional courses for newly qualified drivers which can help to boost their confidence in the early stages. One of the more common ones you may see advertised is a motorway course that teaches new drivers how to deal with driving at speed in an unfamiliar environment. Learning how to deal with situations like motorway driving could help them to avoid an accident and so keep the cost of insuring them and their vehicle as low as possible. As they get older and more experienced, the premiums should naturally come down and hopefully they will be in a position to pay for everything themselves by the time that they get to this stage.
