Road safety: driving schools, prime targets for aggressive drivers

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Pierre Quibel is a wary driving instructor. Because a month ago, while his student was laboriously practicing parking in a residential area of Rouen, in Seine-Maritime, a motorist became impatient and approached their vehicle. "The window was open and, suddenly, he arrived at about this height. He told me that I had no business being there and then he spat on me and, when I started off again, I took a blow to the right side of the face," he says. "I was surprised, I didn't expect at all to be attacked like that during a driving lesson, especially by someone from outside. So, the students were shocked too," the instructor continues to be surprised.

Since then, Pierre has invested in glasses equipped with cameras. Like him, other instructors have reported incivility. The culprits are drivers in a hurry, intolerant of any mistakes made by the students, to the point of coming to blows. For learner drivers , hell is other drivers: "They're in a hurry to get home, so they tailgate us. Or they can even commit infractions, like cutting people off," says one learner driver.

Pressure often stems from impatience. In the middle of Parisian traffic, a young student knows her highway code and respects the speed limits. But even though she has priority, a motorist doesn't seem to want to let her pass. This is a common behavior, according to the instructor. "I'm seeing it more and more often: many drivers don't want to stay behind a driving school. Because they assume that the driving school might stall, that it will drive slowly, that they will respect the highway code, and for them, it will be inconvenient. If I remove the roof sign, I assure you that no one will commit an offense, no one will tailgate us," he explains.

Dangerous behavior that can lead students to have accidents: "We see their driving change afterward. We see that they're taking risks. They're going to speed because they're being pulled over," adds the instructor. For professionals, these incivilities have a cost. In Béziers (Hérault), at a driving school, 12 of the 22 vehicles were hit last year. This is starting to weigh on the company's finances.

"In fact, we had an annual insurance premium that was around 25,000 euros and we received a call for contributions of around 40,000 the following year because, precisely, we had a lot of non-responsible claims, since they were mostly rear-end collisions. When you see a notice of maturity that comes to more than 40,000 euros per year, you start to sweat, wondering how you are going to cover that," laments Gérald Blanco, driving school manager.

Learner drivers face road hazards: 30% of French people admit to tailgating a driver who annoys them.