Sometimes, it’s difficult for parents to let go of their pride and joy. No – we don’t mean you, we mean them letting you drive their car. In many situations, parents may feel anxious about lending you their car to practice your driving, especially since you are less experienced and cars aren’t exactly cheap! If you find yourself in the frustrating situation, in which your parents have denied you access to their car, remember not to pull a strop right away. Private practice is hugely beneficial in the process of learning to drive, so we some advice and tips which will hopefully convince your parents to let you practice your driving in their car!

Approaching the situation

Learning to drive is your first taste of adult responsibility, so you need to approach the situation like an adult. An important thing to understand is that throwing a tantrum or a strop like a child will only imply that you need to be treated like a child. If you were in their shoes, think about what would change their minds. Shouting and pleading isn’t the way to go. What you need to do is arrange a time to all sit down and talk about it in a calm and mature manner. At the end of the day it’s their property, not yours.

Understand Their Concerns

Now you’ve set the tone for a mature conversation, make sure that you actually listen to their concerns. They will feel better knowing that you’re aware of their concerns and by showing respect for their reasons, they should respect your input too. Also, by actively listening and understanding, you can provide a solution in your counter argument.

Provide a Solution to Their Concerns

After you’ve taken the time to listen to their concerns, this is your time to explain your side of the story. Make sure you do your research, provide answers that might change their mind. Instead of spending time talking about the fact that ‘all of your mate’s parents let them drive their car’, why not explain how practising your driving in between lessons could actually help you pass your test? Let us help you out here. Here is a list of ways that private practice could benefit you whilst learning to drive:

• Participating in private practice actually saves you money on driving lessons, due to less time being spent recapping during your lessons.
• By using lessons as a foundation to learn the driving skills needed and using private practice to enforce them in your own time, you can progress faster than someone who only has lessons.

• Being able to spend as much time as you can on the roads whilst supervised, helps you become a more confident and safer driver.
• By having the freedom to practice, you have more opportunity to experience different types of road conditions, which allows you to be prepared for not just your driving test, but as a legal driver.

• Our borrowed car policies at InsureLearnerDriver act as a top up policy, meaning that when you take out a learner driver policy with us – the policy is in the learners name, meaning that if anything were to happen, the owner of the car’s no claims bonus wouldn’t be affected at all.

• You must be supervised always by someone who matches our acceptance criteria, we’ve developed a certain specification to ensure maximum safety of the learner driver during their private practice.

• InsureLearnerDriver can offer a wide range of policies, varying in duration, to accommodate all types of situations.
• You can get cover from anywhere between 1 day to 140 days.

To learn more about the benefits of private practice and the stats, check out our InsureLearnerDriver survey! Remember, you can always get a free quote on our website to see how much it would cost for private practice too!

Accept Their Answer

Whatever happens in this conversation, their answer is something you must accept. At the end of the day, it is their property and it’s their decision whether or not to let you borrow it. Even if the outcome is not your preferred one, you can take pride in knowing that you dealt with the situation in a mature manner and you raised valid points.

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Did you know we also offer learner driver insurance for provisional licence holders who have their own car?