Help please ~ recommendations of the best driving schools...

Hello all,

Since some of you have gone through this process before, does anyone have any recommendations of driving schools or programs for teen drivers up here? Pros and cons and good and bad experiences would be appreciated. Also, any tips would be nice too.

Thank you in advance for any input.

Sunshine Girl

Absolutely recommend MasterDrive!

They start the new driver out with a weekend driving skills course (not on public roads) where they learn crash avoidance techniques in addition to basic steering and braking. After that they do the classroom stuff and end with the on road portion.

It's not the cheapest by any stretch of the imagination but my son swears it was the skills he learned there that has helped him avoid some near wrecks.

Both my kids went through Masterdrive, its expensive but worth it.

Best driving school was great but not sure if that is in your area. He is a former EMT that started the school to save kids and teach them about the dangers of driving. It scared the hell out of my kids, he was big on safety.

Thirding MasterDrive,

There's not a better program anywhere in my opinion! The skills courses they take young drivers through have helped me more than once on the road, and I'm always surprised when I'm driving, ten years later, and something occurs to me that I do, that they taught me.

One of the big things they teach is "always have a way out", whether it's the side-lane, somewhere to go, etc..

Call it paranoia, but that teaching is still something I follow today, no matter where I'm driving. There should always be a constant concern of where to go if things go south.

I've been in one accident, and was not ticketed for being at-fault (the ambulance slid right past the damage and into the ditch... the policeman, who was standing next to me as we witnessed it, just folded up his book and said "Yeah... I'm not gonna give you a ticket on this one..."). There are plenty of classes to teach what drivers can expect, what to be scared-of, and how to operate a vehicle. MasterDrive teaches you so much more than that.

Thanks for confirming what I wanted to do. I'm going to go with the Master Drive Premier Program which is $1,229 verse the Basic Program at $859. One nice thing is that I can split the payments up into 10 payments for approx. $130 if I want to. Another great thing is the Premier Package comes with TWO Skills classes and TWO Winter Driving classes. She said that with the Premier Package it belongs to the family so my son who is 17 and didn't go through Master Drive can use one of the Skills Classes and one of the Winter Driving classes. Perfect! I will feel much better letting them go out into the driving world more prepared with Master Drive. Money well spent I say. Thanks again for all the great feedback! If anyone else has feedback or tips please feel free to post it as I find it very interesting. Thanks, Sunshine Girl

You could always move somewhere where drivers Ed is provided during high school. :Whistle Or try Street Survival. It teaches the same skills for about 60.00 bucks for the day.

pacamom wrote: You could always move somewhere where drivers Ed is provided during high school. :Whistle Or try Street Survival. It teaches the same skills for about 60.00 bucks for the day.

Moving is not happening, but what is Street Survival?

Edited: I found it. Very cool!

When my son took it, it was closer to $800 but did not include winter driving class.