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Driving schools
Bad name
Driving schools in China need revamping, but careful considerations are required before a reform is carried out.
"Have you ever paid for a service that made you feel deprived of dignity?" Asked one user on Zhihu, a Chinese question-and-answer site like Quora. The top viewed answer wryly read: "Going to the driving school." For most license-holders in China, they couldn’t agree more.
China’s driving schools have long been notorious for their excruciatingly awful customer service. The driving coaches, mostly inadequately educated, could cause nightmares for many driving learners. Loutish behaviors abound. Smoking in the car is the least annoying one. A recurring mistake would incur harsh verbal abuse. Repeated failure to operate as instructed would attract a big audience of other coaches spewing offensive comments together. Sexual harassment sometimes occurs too. Curiosity and confidence dampened, learners would feel frustrated and scared to keep learning.
There are exceptions. Dongfangshishang, for example, a highly acclaimed driving school, stands out for its superb customer experience, relatively speaking, of course. It is said to be the first ever driving school in China that has gone listed. But that surely has come with a cost; its tuition fee is almost twice as much as other schools’ in China. Most of the time, people would still prefer lower price and proximity over customer service: “how bad the experience could be?”
Aside from the atrocious coaches, scheduling is another nuisance vexing would-be drivers. They usually have to wait painfully long to get their coaching sessions and tests arranged. Four driving tests almost always fall on workdays, with rare additional tests held on weekend to accommodate a surplus of test-takers. That means regular workers have to repeatedly ask for leave, making a negative impact on their performance at work.
But the ill-mannered driving tutors and the hostile arrangement are not the root causes of the miserable experience in driving schools. The notoriety can be attributed to two underlying reasons. Frist, highly-regulated by the government and not fully open to market competition, driving schools in China are nearly in a monopoly position, thus taking it for granted to dismiss customer service. Unlike other countries where learners are able to apply for a driving license independently, domestic learners, almost in all cases, however, have no option but to do so through a driving school. That means, even when one feels desperate about the service he gets, he has to endure the rigours of the course till it ends, or give up all the learning records there and start all over again in another driving school, which often doesn’t make too much difference. That explains why most people remain silent even they are treated in an awful manner by the coaches.
The horrendous management of driving schools also adds to their bad reputation. Most schools take in more students than they can digest, leading students to wait desperately long for coaching sessions. More stringent rules to regulate coaches than motivating incentives are being carried out all the time, deducting their already meager salary and sapping their work satisfaction. Bored and dissatisfied with their repeated, somewhat dangerous routine work, they in turn vent their smoldering anger on the learners. The terrible management, therefore, also breeds corruption, as learners grease the palms of coaches and examiners to shorten their waiting time or to make their life easier before they can get the license.
Two remedies are suggested. One is to separate training from testing in driving schools like other countries do. Anyone should be able to transfer to a better driving school of his own accord without invalidating his study record in the previous one. That would be effective in curbing corruption. Market forces should play a more important role in eliminating the schools failing to provide standard service.
A more ambitious idea, which is in fact stipulated in law, is to allow people to learn with private coaches and sign up for the driving test on their own. A rosy picture as it seems, it would be no easy to realize. Cars for learners in driving schools are specially tweaked, but individuals are prohibited to do so. Thus a new mechanism should be established, allowing learners to rent cars from driving school for practice. Additionally, the qualification of private coaches need to be closely monitored. Lastly, training sites out of driving schools that meet the test standard are nowhere to be found now. It requires careful planning by the government.
Whether the self-study mode of learning driving can take effect remains to be seen. More empowered driving learners would no doubt unnerve driving schools as many might go out of business. But a world in which people do not have to suffer to get a driver’s license is worth expecting.
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