No more driving hours exploding without warning, prohibited costs such as those claimed to transfer your administrative file from one driving school to another. At least, the 1.6 million people who passed the code review in 2018 and the 1.9 million who drove and who do not always remember this experience hope so.
As of June 1, the government is implementing a standard contract. In concrete terms, the approximately 12,000 driving schools in France will have the obligation to have their students sign this document. Composed of nine pages, it details all the services and the price asked for each of them by the driving school.
Thus, it indicates black and white the cost of administrative costs, the learning booklet but also theoretical and practical courses or even in a simulator. It also specifies the conditions for canceling an hour of driving or the reimbursement of part of the service if, for example, a student decides to interrupt his training.
Soon an online comparator
For the Minister of Economy and Finance, Bruno Le Maire, the standard contract will prevent "certain professionals from introducing prohibited or concealed costs". Above all, it will give more transparency and clarity. In short, a measure that must clean up and restore confidence between driving schools and students.
According to Bercy, the last survey carried out by the DGCCRF (Directorate-General for Competition, Consumption and the Repression of Fraud), in 2018, showed that out of a thousand driving schools targeted for having already been pinned or reported by consumers, almost half (49%) had problems with student contracts. In addition, for 52% of them, price information anomalies were noted.
This standard contract will mainly feed a driving school comparator which will be put online next month by the Ministry of the Interior. And will compare the offers of driving schools, including prices and success rates. A novelty to stimulate competition. "The goal is for us to achieve a 30% drop in the price of a driver's license, the price of which ranges between 1,600 and 1,800 euros on average," said Bruno Le Maire.
A measure which comes on top of those already launched to lower the bill such as driving on a simulator, training on an automatic gearbox, aid of 500 euros for apprentices or even free apprenticeship and first examination of the Code of the road for young volunteers in universal national service (SNU).
"We do not see very well how we are going to do"
Measures that do not convince everyone. Present in the room, during the presentation of the standard contract, Philippe Colombani, the president of the National Union of Driving Independents (Unic) wondered: "When we know that the margin of a car company -school is 10%, we don't really see how we are going to reduce the cost by 30% ”.
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Above all, the president of Unic criticizes the will of the government to highlight the success rate. "We can't throw a number like that!" It must be weighted with the number of hours. Is 60% success rate with 60 hours of driving better than 52% with 30 hours? ". Response from Bruno Le Maire: “The current situation is not satisfactory. If you find French people today who unanimously tell you that driving licenses work super well, you present them to me. "
