The Pinellas Driving School South area includes everything within the county that is South of Ulmerton Road. If you live outside of our coverage area, we could still teach you, but you would need to meet us somewhere within our area. See the list of cities within our South Pinellas Area below.
Being more urban than the northern part of the county, the South area presents some hurdles for a beginning driver. Just as examples: the traffic can be dense, and at times flows quickly. Some of the areas are much older and you’ll find a lot of narrower streets and very tight corners, which new drivers can find challenging. And E-bikes are everywhere these days!
We’ll always start a new driving student in an empty parking lot or an appropriate neighborhood. The big parking lots are getting harder and harder to find, but we keep a few on tap. We’re usually not too far from a good practice neighborhood.
After our student has achieved basic low-speed driving skills, our next step is always a faster 2-lane road. A few options are around, and we may need to drive the student to good location to get that level of experience. But, it’s worth taking the time to do that rather than skipping the basic 2-lane roads and getting right out into unforgiving city traffic and lane changes!
Only after the student has confidently settled into decent lane control, speed control, road signs and basic traffic control devices will we progress to multi-lane roads. In South Pinellas, we often break that up into stages, as well. Easier 4-lane roads and simple lane changes first. Then working up to 6-lane roads and more complex situations.
Our final step, after the student has become comfortable dealing with traffic, making lane changes and traffic light turns on multiple lane surface streets at 40-45 mph… then we’ll focus our attention on higher speed highway driving. We’ll make some passes up and down US-19 just to get familiar with it and adjust to the higher speeds. Then we’ll get into merges. If there is time and the student is ready for it, we’ll also get some time on I-275.
That’s a bird’s eye view of how we might progress with a new driving student in South Pinellas County. Each student is starting in a different location, and with their own skill set and background that will dictate exactly what we do and how we do it. They are all different!