For the unreasonable cost of these lessons, I strongly urge anyone considering Top Driver to turn the other way. Ironically enough Top Driver has the lowest prices of driving schools in my area, but i... Read More
For the unreasonable cost of these lessons, I strongly urge anyone considering Top Driver to turn the other way. Ironically enough Top Driver has the lowest prices of driving schools in my area, but it is NOT worth the cost at all. Be willing to pay a little more and get something worthwhile.
I signed up for adult behind-the-wheel lessons. Keep in mind I have been driving across several towns for a month and have experience in various driving conditions, perfectly capable of maneuvering safely. I only took these lessons to be polished before the DMV road test. However, my instructor was unbelievably condescending, rude, had poor communication skills, and made me feel unsafe. I often felt like he was trying to teach me to be an aggressive driver rather than a cautious one. He also would grab the steering wheel from me beyond necessity, slam the brakes when the way was clear and I had legal right-of-way, and plenty more. I felt like he was just personally annoyed with anything I did, as he called me out for things that were personal habits but inconsequential to road or driving safety. I will have to condense all of my horrible experiences with this instructor into something more sizable.
Some of the advice he gave me was plain wrong and aggressive. For example, I was pulling out of a parking lot waiting to turn into a lane that had the right-of-way, and my instructor told me to quickly take the turn if a car less than 20 feet away (that had right-of-way) appeared to hesitate. In another instance, when we drove by a storefront, I stopped to allow an elderly woman to walk across me into a store - but my instructor yelled at me for waiting so long for her to cross, and said I should begin to accelerate to intimidate her into walking faster. He would yell at me if I yielded momentarily to check for oncoming traffic before taking an unprotected left turn at a traffic light. To be safe within housing complex in-roads, I would yield briefly to check for traffic before turning despite the hour being relatively empty- and my instructor yelled at me for this (however, when taking a K-turn in a completely empty road, he yelled at me for not spending longer checking for incoming traffic before starting the turn).
When I decided to argue with him on these points and insisted that I wanted to be cautious, my instructor resorted to name-calling, telling me I was "pokey" at one point. With his strange personal set of rules he had that seemed contradictory to any driving rule book I studied, I was naturally much shakier when driving alongside him and as a result was prone to minor errors that I would have never otherwise run into. When I was fixing my parking in a tight space and had to wrap my head around shifting gears and adjusting the wheel little by little, my instructor yelled at me for not figuring it out faster, which naturally made me anxious and slower. He would pass furthermore condescending commentary while I was driving, telling me he didn't believe that I had been practicing regularly, that I was a poor driver, and "clearly had no confidence behind the wheel".
If you are a first-time driver, do not make the mistake of taking lessons here, or else you will HATE driving. I was lucky to have developed my own driving confidence prior, but even then my self-confidence would drop dramatically after lessons (my family noticed my driving to be much shakier, my maneuvers much poorer than normal). Also, if you have an instructor like mine, do not expect to get practice merging on the freeway because he knows nothing about the area or any routes. He might also try to convince you to fill gas with him during the lesson, like he tried to with me - do not give in because you paid money to drive, not to fill gas. Read Less