“Thank you for the follow, it’s nice! Now, as you requested in the chat, we are going to review together some priority rules… ”Like every Tuesday afternoon, there will be several hundred behind their screens wondering who, the blue car or the car red, must be the first to enter this intersection. But above all, for an hour and a half, these learner drivers will be able to ask questions, share their experience, or ask for advice from their sofa to Sophie, trainer and now streamer.
In recent months, the Vendée company Rousseau Codes, leader in the learning of the Highway Code, has indeed launched
his chain on the Twitch platform, and hosts three lives per week for its nearly 10,000 subscribers. “The objective is to offer young people the opportunity to revise in a fun way,” explains Clémence Terrasse, marketing director. They exchange in an uninhibited manner, which cannot necessarily be done in a driving school. »A way above all of not leaving the field open to competition, that of the many driving schools
in line, at a time when young people no longer have the time or the inclination to go and lock themselves in a room to prepare for the famous 40 questions.
From slide to online sessions
Because if the famous learning manual, launched in 1937, is still one of the bestsellers with 400,000 copies sold per year, it is especially on the Internet that it happens. After the passage from the slide to the DVD, via the video cassette, this new turn was in fact taken by the company several years ago, by offering its partner driving schools (around 2,000 throughout France ) access to an online platform for their students, in addition to face-to-face lessons. “Digital today represents 70% of our turnover (14.3 million euros in 2020), calculates Michel Goepp, the president of the company who will move in 2023 in a brand new building, still in Sables-d’Olonne. We have gained around fifteen employees over the past twenty years (94 in total), notably from 4 to 14 IT developers. “
With his driving simulator, launched last year and presented as “the most successful on the market”, Codes Rousseau forecasts “a very good year 2021” while the driving license market (around 900,000 candidates per year) is stable. Yes, but until when? “We are still far from the autonomous car, so we will still need to pass the license…, predicts Michel Goepp. But the driving school world will continue to evolve, we are heading towards a decline in theoretical education and the development of hybrid vehicles with automatic gearboxes, which will reduce the number of learning hours. “
Not enough to panic Codes Rousseau, who even sees the development of driving aids, but also of electric bicycles and scooters, as “an opportunity for companies that would like to develop specific training”. A “soft mobility” book has just been published to support them.