First off, let’s clear this up. Being a good driver is one thing, being a great driving instructor is another completely different skill set entirely. You can parallel park a car as if you’ve got a robotic arm attached to you, and pull onto the motorway from 5mph but none of that’s worth squat if you can’t explain why you do the “mirror, signal, manoeuvre” combo to a 17 year old gripping the wheel like their whole life’s depend on it check my source.

That’s why you do training.

Depending on the area that you live, you can’t officially charge money for teaching people how to drive unless you get a bit of accreditation. If you live in the UK then that’s an “Approved Driving Instructor” or ADI. The whole course of ADI training can be broken down into three parts: a theory test (harder than the normal one), a more advanced practical test and a teaching ability test.

If you fail one part a few times, they can knock your slate clean.

It’s brutal.

Most people find part one the most difficult part to get over with. You’ve done the driving test many years ago and you think that you’ve memorised the Highway Code – how difficult could it be? A completely different kettle of fish than actually sitting in a hall and doing a test on obscure hazard clips or traffic management for example.

Part two’s where you realise that your ego can’t hold its own anymore. Many wannabe driving instructors find that they’ve fallen into bad habits because they’ve spent 10+ years just “driving”. The rolling stop at that junction where you’re quite confident that nobody’s coming from 3 miles away – yeah an ADI examiner sees that all the time!

And the last part of the ADI test, part three, is just weird! You’re no longer driving the car yourself, but sitting next to someone else, talking them through a drive, (sometimes they even purposely drive badly so they’re not an easy student) but all while not being able to automatically grab the steering wheel – the reflex you always had when training people yourself in the past.

Outside of the tests themselves there are also a lot of other skills that will be taught on a good driving instructor course that won’t be printed on a textbook. How to keep calm and reassure someone that is having a panic attack on a roundabout? What to say to the person that has been on their test for the fifth time, and has probably thought of giving up at least 100 times?

With years of teaching, you eventually gain patience the hard way.

It often involves the odd hair raising experience.

You’ve also got the business side of being a driving instructor to consider. The insurance costs for the vehicle (you need one that is insured to teach with), the maintenance of that vehicle, booking lessons and taking payment. They don’t really mention it much, but you are in effect running your own mobile business and that’s often the half your job.