Driving school car: inflow despite high costs
Photo: Swen Pförtner/ dpa
Inflation and climate crisis - high costs and environmental concerns actually speak against driving a car.
But according to the Federal Association of Driving Instructor Associations, driving schools are very popular.
The interest in driving licenses is still great, said Kurt Bartels, the vice-chairman of the association, of the dpa news agency.
"All over the country, the driving schools are very busy." Bartels suspects a reason in the pandemic.
People would have spent less money on travel, for example – and “have money left over to get luxury driver’s licenses like the one for a motorcycle”.
In big cities there are also some who prefer to sit in their own car instead of wearing a mask on crowded buses and trains.
"We are concerned and expect that interest in driving licenses will decrease, also due to the key economic data," said Bartels.
Whether there will ultimately be slumps is difficult to predict.
"We don't notice much yet."
But the driving instructors notice something else: According to their assessment, learner drivers in Germany are less attentive on the road than they were years ago.
"The young person who comes to driving school today has a completely different perception of traffic than 20 years ago - namely a lower one," said Bartels.
“Look in a car and see if the children are looking at the road.
No, they look at their smartphone.
They walk and look at their smartphones,” he criticized.
That's why young people no longer have the "natural affinity for traffic that they used to have."
According to the association, this is one of the reasons why the failure rate for driving license tests has been increasing for years.
The TÜV association recently reported, citing figures from the Federal Motor Transport Authority, that 37 percent of the theory tests had not been passed in the previous year - after 29 percent in 2013. In the practical test for the car driving license category B, the failure rate was higher amounted to 43 percent last year.
Apparently, it's not just the smartphone obsession of younger people.
"The volume of traffic and the number of regulations have increased enormously over the past 20 years," said Bartels.
In addition, the demands on the learner drivers during the test have increased.
“There is a higher failure rate in big cities than in rural areas because the volume of traffic is different.”
mmq/dpa
