How many driving lessons until private practise with family?

I have had 7 driving lessons which puts me at about 12 hours of road experience with a professional instructor who has dual controls. I desperately want to start going out with my parents as we have a car ideal for me to learn on. My parents are hesitant however, my dad keeps complaining about the cost of putting me on the insurance and that he doesn't want to waste money until I am ready. This is a fair point, but I am definitely ready to give it ago and the only way I am going to improve is through private practise. My instructor already thinks my parents are helping me out and initially said that after my 5th lesson I should be fine to start. I can do all the basics now like moving off, steering, changing gear and the emergency stop. Of course I am no where near perfect and do stall sometimes and get the wrong gear, but all learners are the same. At what point did you start privately practising with your family?

I know some of my friends started learning with their parents around a small industrial estate before even starting lessons!

I have had 7 driving lessons which puts me at about 12 hours of road experience with a professional instructor who has dual controls. I desperately want to start going out with my parents as we have a car ideal for me to learn on. My parents are hesitant however, my dad keeps complaining about the cost of putting me on the insurance and that he doesn't want to waste money until I am ready. This is a fair point, but I am definitely ready to give it ago and the only way I am going to improve is through private practise. My instructor already thinks my parents are helping me out and initially said that after my 5th lesson I should be fine to start. I can do all the basics now like moving off, steering, changing gear and the emergency stop. Of course I am no where near perfect and do stall sometimes and get the wrong gear, but all learners are the same. At what point did you start privately practising with your family?

I know some of my friends started learning with their parents around a small industrial estate before even starting lessons!

How often does your instructor have to use their own pedals and take over the wheel? If you're not braking on time and instinctively, can't turn properly or other basic controls then dont take the car.

But after 10 lessons you should be fine. Im learning, on my 12th hour of lessons and I started driving my dads car from the 8th. If you feel confident then go for it.

7 lessons is more than enough. Provisional insurance is MUCH cheaper than normal insurance anyway. Most of my friends, me included, only did 10 lessons total and did the rest of our practice in personal vehicles. I believe I started in my own car after 2 or 3 lessons.

That is really impressive I know most people do a lot of practise with parents. I just can't convince my parents that I am ready yet! Do you have any tips on how I can persuade my parents to put me on the insurance? I told them how it would be cheaper in the long run as I would near less lessons which are like £20 for an hour.

My parents also didn't want to add me to their insurance (it would have been £90 a month) so I got short term insurance using veygo.com, where you can just pay for a couple of hours (I paid £4 for two hours). It seems like a pretty good option for learning.

I didn't do private practice, my dad didn't want me on driving his car while I was still learning. I'm glad he said no because when I passed (after about 20-24 hours of lessons with an instructor) and I drove his car it was so different. The biting point was much lower on my dad's car so I stalled a lot (5 times in a row once which made me cry), I couldn't take the handbrake off because it was much stiffer, so my dad and I had to do teamwork when moving off - he did the handbrake and I did the pedals as I couldn't press the button to release it. Also the gears were so sticky and difficult to change that I struggled a lot with it. It would have put me off driving and made me pass a lot later than I did if I practiced in my dad's car as well.

Maybe that is the exact reason why you should have practiced in that's car amen saved your 20-24 lessons worth of money. I practised and did my test in a golf mark 4 which I by no means the best or worst car, but after driving that I feel like any car doesn't take a huge amount of adjustment (in comparison, when driving an instructors car which does WAY too much for you and is too easy compared to what you will be driving, it then takes a lot of token to get used to your own car and as you said, it's a real confidence knocker).

I wouldn't have done all my learning in my dad's car because he isn't an instructor so he wouldn't have known how to teach me and make me pass the test. The only thing different about the instructor's car is the dual controls. My dad got a new car in March and I made him buy almost the exact same model my instructor had so that if I drive it I know I'll be able to (only difference it was a button instead of a key to start it). Plus my dad didn't want me wrecking his car.

But as you said before; the clutch was easier, gears were easier, handbreak was easier... the modern driving instructor cars do so much of it for you, including helping A LOT with clutch control. I personally found it was better to learn in the worse of the 2 scenarios so I'm ready for anything and actually feel more confident in easier cars, than to do it in the best scenario and then have to relearn and feel inconfident after my test.

And let's be real, instructors don't really teach you a great deal. Once they have shown you the manoeuvres once, you can tell your parent how it is meant to Be done and ask them to watch you, and they don't really teach you a great deal else either, except mirror signal manoeuvre and to keep checking your mirrors when things change, which again, you can ask your parents to do. Other than that I don't see what's benefit you get from doing that huge amount of hours with an instructor that you cant get with a committed parent.

That is really impressive I know most people do a lot of practise with parents. I just can't convince my parents that I am ready yet! Do you have any tips on how I can persuade my parents to put me on the insurance? I told them how it would be cheaper in the long run as I would near less lessons which are like £20 for an hour.

That's because my instructor got a brand new car after a couple months of me having lessons. I actually didn't notice this but my brother (who was also learning at the same time) and my friend told me he got a new car. I didn't even notice anything was different, says a lot about me! My dad's car is over 12 years old and starting to fall apart so I think that must have had something to do with it.

My dad is a person who gets very frustrated very easily. If I don't get it right within a short amount of time, he will lose patience. My instructor was amazingly patient with me. My dad would not have been able to teach me the manoeuvres and the correct rules of the road, simply because a) he doesn't parallel park, do 3 point turns or reverse around corners regularly and b) he doesn't follow the rules of the road himself (because he is so impatient) so him being my teacher would have been scary.

I think having a parent teach you to drive only works if the parent is willing and patient enough. My dad has over 40 years driving experience so I know he's a good driver (to an extent that he's never had a crash and can navigate well, but he never goes the speed limit and gets mild road rage), but it's the patience and lack of knowledge of the test standards and requirements that made me decide against parental teaching.

Edit: to add, when I did go driving with my dad he was so shocked and surprised about the methods I'd been taught and was actually saying how good they were. In my instructors car you would only go into 5th gear going 50mph+, whereas in my dad's car it would rumble if you weren't in 5th gear going 25mph. Each car is different, hence my struggle after I passed.

Yeah the 5th gear thing in 50 is a BS speed control rule. Better off going up as soon as you can and saving fuel.

And yeah it's not surprising that he was patient with you when he know she you're paying him by the hour and very handsomely as well.

And I understand that your parent might not know those things, but you can tell them how it's got to be done and they can watch for that.

My parents are similar patience wise so I can see where you are coming from. But I just told them when I should be checking my mirrors etc while driving and asked them to watch me. And then I would tell them the few simple rules with each manoeuvre that they needed to watch out for. Obviously it's best to try the manouvere with the instructor for a lesson first, so you know what to tell them to look out for.

Maybe I was just lucky in the sense that my parents quickly grasped what was required from them to teach me.

I can only imagine my dad's face if I told him how to tell me to drive.