Driving School in Palm Harbor

Crystal Beach fishing pier, Palm Harbor

Pinellas Driving School serves all of Pinellas County, which includes Palm Harbor and surrounding communities! We’ll start by exploring your own neighborhood (if it is appropriate) to evaluate your skill level, before getting out onto some secondary two-lane roads like Palm Harbor Blvd (Alt-19), Omaha Street, or Highlands Blvd. From there, as you are ready, we’ll start exploring the traffic on Belcher, Tampa Road, Alderman, and eventually US-19! If we have time, and there is a need, we may even explore downtown Dunedin or Tarpon Springs, and even head South for some highway driving on the US-19 flyover through Clearwater.

Learning to Drive

Learning to drive an automobile in the modern age can be intimidating, especially when you live in the busy metropolitan area of Pinellas County! We’re here to help ease the transition from “nervous beginning driver” to “confident experienced driver.” At Pinellas Driving School, we believe that it all starts with the basics.

Driving School

A lot of folks who teach driving, whether they be your Uncle Ernie, dear old Grandad, your Mom, or sometimes even a professional driving school — they have the tendency to push a new driver out into the world before they are ready. “Here are the keys, that’s the steering wheel, gas is on the right, brake is on the left, let’s go drive across town!” In addition to being potentially very dangerous, it’s completely overwhelming to the student, and it’s a sort of backwards approach.

Sure, the sink-or-swim method can work… eventually (if you don’t end up with a crashed car, or a mentally traumatized student first). Unfortunately, you end up with drivers who know how to navigate city traffic (sort of), but still have no idea what their car can and can’t do. How big is the car? How quickly can it stop? How quickly can it turn to avoid something? How quickly can it NOT stop? What happens if I try to turn too sharply too fast, or try to pull a lane change too fast at 60 mph? These are things that a LOT of people learn “by accident,” and this is why your auto insurance rates for the first 5-10 years of driving are so expensive! Pinellas Driving School is here to help you avoid those pitfalls.

Learn to Drive with Confidence

The Pinellas Driving School approach is to spend the time necessary to ensure that the student is fully comfortable with the car before getting them out into traffic. We try to build confidence with skills such as negotiating turns, smooth acceleration and braking, smooth and confident quick stops, emergency stops, and looking far enough ahead to avoid most of the surprises on the road. Once a driver has mastered those things, then when they get out into traffic, they’re no longer thinking about “the car,” and they can more easily focus on “the traffic.” As a result, we find that students who have completed our driving school course become safer and more confident more quickly than just dumping them into traffic and hoping that they figure everything out while every other driver on the road is trying to kill them!

About Us

Pinellas Driving School is a Florida state certified driving school, and we employ driving instructors who are both Florida state certified and trained to teach to our strict standards. But we’re not just teachers, we are driving enthusiasts! We appreciate the privilege of driving a car, and everything that entails. We want to share our enthusiasm for driving PROPERLY with a new generation, and that is why we do this. As a result, we’re teaching more than just the bare minimum of “how to drive a car” or “how to pass your license test.” We teach our students how to be safe, confident and courteous drivers at their core.

If you have questions about anything, feel free to Contact Us by phone or email.

We presently have three instructors. Steve and Loren are the owners of the school. Each of our instructors constantly share their teaching experiences with each other and strive to provide the best learning experience for each student, regardless of their driving history, their skill level, or their background.

Our Instructors

Loren Williams

Loren’s passion for driving dates back to his youth. Like many teen drivers, he made his share of expensive mistakes, and learned from them. One of his goals is to thoroughly teach new drivers so that they can AVOID such mistakes! He understands the physics and psychology of driving, and tries to teach on a deeper level. The more you understand what the car is doing and how your brain relates to what the car is doing, the better you’ll be at driving!

He has been teaching driving since the late 1990’s, and has been a Florida State Certified Driving Instructor off and on since 2006 and has taught behind-the-wheel driving for two of the major driving schools in the area. Most recently, he’s been teaching driving consistently since 2015 and started Pinellas Driving School with Steve Frank in 2017.

Loren’s history includes 8 years of military service, a degree in electronics, years of work in the electronics and information industries, and even a little work in commercial graphics and website design. Hobbies are primarily amateur motorsports and tinkering with cars and computers. He also plays ukulele, and does some bicycling.

He is married with an adult son, and shares his home with his wife, two cats… and three cars.

Steve Frank

Steve also has a great passion for driving dating back to his teen years. As a 30+ year resident of the Tampa Bay area, he really knows his way around and is familiar with the rich history of Pinellas County.

He started teaching people about driving in the mid 2000’s, and became a State Certified Driving Instructor when he and Loren Williams started Pinellas Driving School in 2017. Having absorbed some of Loren’s driving instruction wisdom in addition to his own experience, he has become an outstanding driving instructor!

He brings with him a strong background in psychology, with over 25 years as a psychologist specializing in helping folks recover from brain injury. This is part of what makes him extremely compassionate of not just his students, but other drivers on the road. He’s good at teaching his students that “it’s not all about you.”

Steve shares Loren’s hobbies of amateur motorsports and sports cars. In fact, it is how the two of them met, and they also share ownership in a motorsports club!

Steve has a daughter in college, and keeps busy juggling time between this driving school and his psychology practice.

Jim Marana

Jim comes to us with over 30 years of experience as a public school teacher in Michigan. He taught physical education, health, and driver’s education. He was also very active coaching a variety of sports, including high school football.

Jim currently lives with his wife in Treasure Island, FL.  They have two adult sons, and 2 grand-daughters. 

In his spare time, he is an avid bicycler and motorcyclist, and enjoys watching sports, especially football.

Jim has retired as a school teacher, but missed both teaching and coaching. This job is perfect for him, and we’re glad to have him!

 

Our Methods

The Pinellas Driving School approach to driver education is a personal and practical one. Our in car lessons emphasize driver confidence and safety. We start by evaluating the actual skills and abilities of the student in the car with them driving. Students who have never started a car before, much less driven one, are going to need a far more basic approach than other students who may be looking to fine-tune their skills before taking the road test for their license. A student who is already licensed and may be looking to enhance confidence or general skills will require yet another approach. No matter what, we’ll adjust the flavor of our in car lessons to match students’ experience and goals.

So, if we’re teaching an in car lesson with a student who is a new driver, we’ll spend the time necessary to ensure that the student is fully comfortable with the car before getting them driving. Proper seat and steering wheel adjustment, hand placement, and mirror adjustment might be our starting points. For a more experienced student, we may try to build confidence with skills such as negotiating turns, smooth acceleration and braking, smooth and sure quick stops, emergency stops, lane management, and looking far enough ahead to avoid most of the surprises on the road. The only way to learn these things is with in car lessons, behind the wheel, with an experienced and patient instructor.

No matter what level of skill, we try to explain the “why” behind the instructions that we provide during our in car lessons. Whether the reason is rooted in physics, in the mechanical capability of the car, in state driving laws, or in common courtesy, we believe that it is important to understand why. We’ve found that when students understand why they are doing something, they are likely to remember more of that information. We try to make our directions and the explanations simple and understandable, and if students don’t understand, we explain it another way, we demonstrate it, we practice it… it’s worth the time that it takes at every step in the process!

As a result, we find that students who have completed a course of in car lessons with us become safer and more confident more quickly. Teach a driver thoroughly from the beginning, you get a better driver!

Services

What we DO:

Our services are simple, we offer driving lessons! We teach folks to drive. We primarily do in-car behind-the-wheel driving instruction throughout Pinellas County. You can purchase a package of lessons, or just do individual lessons, you decide how many lessons you want your driving course to include!

If you’re unsure of how many lessons you might need to take, check our aptly named How Many Lessons page for our recommendations! Feel free to give us a call or email if you have questions.

We mostly teach beginning drivers (of any age). But, we’re happy to offer refresher lessons to experienced drivers, or to anyone who wants to improve or expand their driving skill set. We teach everything from beginning to advanced, parking lots to interstates, and everything in-between!

If you’ve been in a car crash (whether you were at fault or not), we can help you understand what went wrong, and what actions you might take in the future to help prevent future crashes.

What we DO NOT do:

  • We don’t administer the Road Test (or any other tests) for you to obtain a driver’s license (see our FAQ)
  • We don’t do any prep for any of the knowledge tests required to get your license, there are good online courses for that. We teach drivers who already have their license or learner’s license in-hand.
  • We don’t JUST teach the bare minimum to pass the road test. We will teach you to drive, which will naturally include the things that are on the road test. But, we will decline to ONLY teach the road test. We feel that it would be unethical and irresponsible of us to put people on the road who we don’t feel are ready to be independent and safe drivers.
  • We don’t take you to the DMV for your Road Test, or allow you to test in our car.
  • We don’t offer any of the following for moving violations you may have received:
    • ticket classes
    • court-ordered driver improvement training
    • court-ordered defensive driving classes

DRIVING LESSONS
Area Served
We serve most of Pinellas County, South of Alderman Rd. This includes the following communities:
Bay Pines
Belleair
Belleair Beach
Belleair Bluffs
Belleair Shores
Clearwater
Dunedin
Feather Sound
Gulfport
Indian Rocks Beach
Indian Shores
Kenneth City
Largo
Lealman
Madeira Beach
North Redington Beach
Oldsmar
Palm Harbor
Pinellas Park
Redington Beach
Redington Shores
Ridgecrest
Safety Harbor
Seminole

South Highpoint
South Pasadena
Saint Pete Beach
Saint Petersburg
Tierra Verde
Treasure Island
Length of Lessons
Experience has taught us that the most effective length of a driving lesson is 90 minutes. This gives us enough time to review and evaluate a bit; enough time to get comfortable with the car; enough time for us to go places and do things, and introduce new concepts. Less time makes things feel rushed. More time and students start getting bored or tired, plus it’s more difficult for most students to fit a longer lesson into their schedule.

We do offer/allow/recommend occasional back-to-back lessons for more experienced students. This gives us a 3-hour block of time to work with, and allows us to go places and do things (back roads, interstate driving, short trips to unfamiliar places, etc) that are often extremely difficult to accomplish in 90 minutes.

Lessons Include

  • highly qualified, experienced and compassionate driving instructors
  • instructors are state certified, which includes background check
  • reliable, comfortable and safe state-certified dual-brake equipped driver’s ed cars
  • the most expensive car insurance you can imagine
  • easy online driving lesson scheduling
  • pick-up and drop-off at your home or preferred location
  • feedback on student progress after each lesson
  • guidance on what the student should practice between lessons

Packages and Gifts
Yes, we can sell a package of lessons! You can use a package for yourself, your child or you can give it as a gift. Look further down on this page for our recommendations on how many lessons you might need, and then read our Driving Lesson Packages page.

Schedule Now!
We do all of our scheduling online! You don’t even have to call and talk to us if you don’t want to. We’re happy to answer questions if you call or email us. But, if you’re ready to get started, you can start scheduling driving lessons RIGHT NOW! Anytime, day or night.

We do require pre-payment to schedule a lesson, so have your credit card ready. Also, you must consent to our Student Agreement when you register for lessons, so you should go ahead and read that now.


The important thing


is for you to rationally decide how many lessons to take. DON’T expect a beginning driver to be a safe and confident driver with just 6, 9 or 12 (or even 20) driving lessons. The state of Florida requires a beginning teen driver to have completed a minimum (MINIMUM) of 50 hours of supervised driving practice before getting their driver’s license. And at least 10 of those hours must be at night. These are minimums, we strongly advocate MORE practice than this. Get out and drive!

Read our recommendations on How Many Lessons to take.

We can teach more


outside of our typical curriculum of urban street driving in a typical car with an automatic transmission, we are also available to teach other things. Let us know what you want to learn, if it’s related to cars, we can probably teach it!

OTHER INSTRUCTION AVAILABLE
Night Driving Lessons
We don’t currently have night hours on our regular schedule. But, it is important for driving students to learn to drive at night, and we do offer this service! If you need it, please contact us for scheduling.

Manual Transmission
As a general rule, we like to teach basic driving in a car with an automatic transmission. We do NOT have a proper “manual transmission driver’s ed car” with a dual brake setup. With few exceptions, we’re not likely to teach manual transmission driving to a driver until after they have their full driver’s license. And then, we’d prefer to teach it in your own car. We’re perfectly willing, able, and even EAGER to teach it! But, it’s a special service, and you’ll just have to talk to us about your situation and we can work out what our options are.

Intro to Cars
Want to learn about how the car actually works? This 90-minute hands-on session will provide an overview of everything from basic maintenance (checking the oil and fluids, checking tire pressure, changing a tire) to how the various systems of a car work (the engine, the transmission, the brakes, etc). It’s not required, but having a basic understanding of how things work goes a long way toward improving driver confidence and skill! We highly recommend it.

Pricing & Packages

We try to keep things as simple as we can. But, it still gets a little complex. We’ve done our best to explain and answer most of your questions below.

Please understand that we are typically very BUSY, as is every other driving school in the area. It would be wise to plan and schedule your lessons EIGHT WEEKS in advance. Yes, we are often scheduling that far out. Plan ahead! Way ahead!

Driving Lesson Packages

Yes, we can sell driving lesson packages! To purchase lessons as a package, you must purchase at least 6 lessons and you can do it right in the scheduler. You decide how many lessons you want! Here are our recommendations on How Many Lessons to take.

Don’t hesitate to Contact Us, give us some background and let us help you decide how many lessons you might need.

How Our Packages Work

Once you’ve decided how many lessons you need, you can purchase your package through the scheduler and schedule your first appointment immediately! Or, if you’re purchasing a package as a gift, get with us to arrange that. (see below)

After payment for the package is received, we will set up your Coupon Code that you will use when you schedule your lessons. (this is a manual process, it might take a day or so) We will email this code to you, please don’t try to schedule package lessons beyond your first lesson until you have received your code! The code will be unique to you, and can be used to pay for complete lessons up to the number of lessons in your package.

So, once you’ve purchased your package and scheduled your first appointment:

  1. WAIT until you receive the email with your Coupon Code in it. It could take up to 36 hours.
  2. Then you can log in and schedule the rest of your appointments as you wish.
  3. Remember to click “Apply Coupon” after you enter the Coupon Code for each appointment. If the system asks for payment, you didn’t apply the coupon.

This makes it super-easy for you or anyone you share your Coupon Code with to schedule a driving lesson. It discounts the full price of the lesson, and bypasses the checkout process.

Important Package Policies

  • You must schedule your appointments online. (trust us, it’s so easy, you’ll WANT to do it that way)
  • We have limited availability, and you have no priority over other clients. You must schedule well in advance to ensure that you get the dates and times that you desire!
  • A package must include a minimum of 6 lessons.
  • Packages EXPIRE at the end of 12 months. Use the lessons or lose them.
  • Package lessons can be used by any student. Anyone you share your code with can use it to schedule a lesson.

Actual Cost

We offer significant discounts for packages of 6 or more lessons! Example packages below. Single lessons, and 6, 9 or 12-lesson packages are easily purchased through our online scheduler. Custom packages of 6 or more lessons are available if you call first.

Package Size Full Rate Pkg Rate Per Lsn You Save
1-to-5 Lessons $180 $180
6 Lessons $1080 $960 $160 $120
9 Lessons $1620 $1395 $155 $225
12 Lessons $2160 $1800 $150 $360

All Lessons are 90 minutes long and include student pickup.

More Pricing Details

Individual Driving Lessons
We recommend purchasing your driving lessons as a package (see above). But, if you’re only going to need one or two lessons, or if you prefer to pay-as-you-go, we’re happy to allow you to book individual lessons. In fact, you can go straight to the scheduler and have your first driving lesson booked in about 5 minutes!

Benefits of Purchasing a Package
You save money!

Scheduling lessons is easier. If you schedule individual lessons, you have to go through the payment process each time, and it’s a hassle. With a package, you just enter your code when you schedule, and you’re done!

Having a set number of lessons aids the instructor (and the student) because we know how much time we have, and can more effectively plan and prioritize our lessons.

Gift Packages
You can purchase a package as a gift! You’ll need to call or email us to arrange it. Packages must be arranged and paid for BEFORE scheduling. You can help speed our process along by setting up a user account for the student in our online scheduler so that we’ll have all of their information, just don’t schedule an appointment yet. We’ll email you an invoice, and when it’s paid, we’ll send you a coupon code. From there, it works just like a regular package. Use the code when you schedule the lessons. Easy!

Contact Us

You can schedule your lessons online at any time. Schedule Now!

But, if you’ve got questions you need answered before you do that, we’ve got answers! Fill out the contact form below to send us an email, we’ll respond as quickly as we can. You can also call us at 727-828-6063, but we’re often out teaching students, so be sure to leave a voice mail!