The Senate endorses online training to obtain a driver’s license

The war that has recently arisen between traditional and digital driving schools, on account of the business model and road training, has resulted in an agreement that seems to satisfy both parties. The classes to obtain the theoretical part of the driving license may continue to be taught online, both by local training centers and by digital platforms. And the latter will be obliged to have a location per province, as is currently the case.

The conflict between both business models had intensified in recent weeks on account of the parliamentary processing of the traffic law reform, what is destined to renew the card for points and increase the sanction of some infractions, such as driving while holding the mobile. Although the standard contains many other precepts, such as the obligation to wear a helmet on electric scooters or Article 62, which is what has confronted traditional driving schools with digital ones, which have managed to make the leap thanks to the pandemic.

During the confinement and the months after, many aspiring drivers opted for internet platforms over the impossibility of face-to-face classes or the fear of contagion. And also the traditional driving schools, which mostly already offered online theoretical classes, increased this possibility. The classes destined to pass the practical exam, obviously, is still a matter of sitting with the teacher in the car and spending hours until learning how to function on the streets and highways correctly.

The amendments

Digital driving schools reaped a great victory when the law passed through the Congress. They managed, thanks to amendments from Citizens that were transacted, that allowed them to operate throughout Spain, even if they had a solo local. But this business possibility aroused the traditional training centers, which began a campaign to convince the parties of the need to support the majority sector and not to move towards ‘uberization’. And they have succeeded. The Senate Committee on the Interior has reversed the situation. And all the actors consider that this article of the law will no longer undergo changes when the norm is approved in plenary session or upon its return to Congress for final approval.

“In the Senate we have spoken with all the parties, we have made them see the dangers and we understand that in Congress there will be no changes“, he maintains Enrique Lorca, president of the National Confederation of Spanish Driving Schools (NINE), employers of the traditional sector. The three dangers that the CNAE has spread among politicians and the media have to do with the possibility of closing up to 3,000 driving schools in the face of “unfair competition” that digital platforms would make them, especially in the so-called ’emptied Spain’, where they would not need to have any premises. In addition, these centers could have caused “chaos” by having the possibility of presenting students at any traffic headquarters in Spain. And finally, the road safety given that the teachers of the new model “are not accredited by the DGT” and “anyone” can give training, according to Lorca.

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Awareness

Although, Miguel González-Gallarza, spokesman for the Digital Driving School Platform, denies all these arguments, points out that all his teachers They are registered with Social Security and have “better conditions” than in traditional centers. The PAD spokesman admits that the change introduced on a single location in the Senate “is a missed opportunity” but asserts that the model of digital driving schools “has been legally consolidated“since the legal reform” explicitly recognizes the validity of online training“, by allowing not only the classes for the theoretician but also the awareness about road safety to be done electronically.