It shouldn’t stay the way it is, says Florian Müller. “The costs of driving licenses are overwhelming for many young people.” There are also regions in Germany where you have to wait months for the test. “This endangers mobility – and ultimately also social participation,” says the CDU MP. His group is therefore submitting a motion to the Bundestag this Thursday. “So that mobility does not become a luxury – for an affordable car driving license” is written above the application – it was largely written by Müller.
The cost of driving licenses has actually increased significantly in recent years. They differ regionally and according to the number of driving hours required. According to the ADAC, total costs of more than 3,500 euros are no longer uncommon. And in the federal capital alone there are a lack of 20,000 exam dates.
“In Berlin, they wait well over half a year for their test appointment, so they need maintenance driving lessons in order to continue to be ready for the test – that’s completely unnecessarily spent money,” says Müller. In order to eliminate the bottleneck in practical driving license tests, the Union wants examiners from the Bundeswehr, federal police and state police to be temporarily approved. In addition, the number of examiners is to be increased by changing the requirements. Up to now, engineering training has been a prerequisite – this will no longer apply in the future.
In the past, parents would have practiced with their children in the parking lot
The Union faction also demands that the federal government “create the legal basis to enable theory lessons in digital form”. This could also make driving licenses cheaper. Above all, the Union wants to ensure that students no longer need so many expensive driving lessons. In its example calculation, the ADAC estimates 55 to 77 euros per driving hour of 45 minutes. If you need 15 instead of 25 hours of practice, you can save a lot of money.
In the past, parents often practiced with their children in a parking lot, says Müller. And at his home in the Sauerland, many have already sat on the tractor. That helped in driving school. The Union faction is now relying on the additional use of driving simulators so that the examinees can gain more safety behind the wheel more quickly and cheaply.
And what do practitioners say about all this? Kurt Bartels is deputy chairman of the Federal Association of Driving Instructors Associations. He also finds the backlog of driving tests annoying. “The situation in Berlin is really extreme, and there are also traffic jams in some other metropolitan areas – but otherwise there are no longer any serious problems,” says Bartels. The fact that driving examiners no longer need engineering training “would help” to ease the situation in problem regions. The use of examiners from the Bundeswehr and the police is also “in principle a good suggestion”.
But he “suspects that the capacities of the Bundeswehr and police are not so great that this would be a big relief,” says Bartels. He doesn’t think much of digital theory training. “That would only save the learner drivers a good 100 euros.” And he doesn’t believe in driving simulators.
But driving instructors and the Union agree on one thing: examinees can save the most if they pass on the first attempt. But that’s exactly where there’s a problem. The TÜV has just presented its balance sheet for the past year: According to it, the failure rate has reached a new high.