If you’re a parent in the modern era, you’ve probably looked into ways of getting your teen their driver’s license. The standard thing to do is sign your child up for a driver’s ed class. You’ll have to drop your child off at the driver’s ed location weekly for most of the summer, or maybe longer.
Once your child is at the driver’s ed location, they’ll do a few things. First, they’ll hear a few lectures and watch a few videos. You’ll have no way of verifying how good these lectures are or how up to date the videos are. The purpose of these videos will be to teach your child the barebones basics of driving.
Afterward, they’ll drive around with the instructor for a set number of hours, then observe other people driving for a set number of hours. Once it’s over, they’ll take a written test at the DMV, then a road test with a state trooper.
But what if there was a 21st century way of doing driver’s ed? There is – kind of. In this article, we’ll review Aceable, one of the best-reviewed online driver’s education and defensive driving education providers. By the time we’re done, you’ll know if Aceable is the right service for you or your child.
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What Does Aceble Do?
Aceable is an online platform which teaches basic principles of driving as taught in the classroom portions of a driver’s ed class. The website also provides defensive driving classes. These classes are often mandated by traffic court when someone is a serial offender.
The same person will probably not need both sets of classes from Aceable, but you never know.
Aceable classes are accredited in a number of states, which means that you can transfer them between states if it is necessary to move during the course. Notably, you cannot take the final examination necessary to procure your license on Aceable.
While you can take plenty of practice tests, you will still need to attend the DMV when they hold the test for both the learner’s permit and the driver’s license.
On that note, Aceable is intended for people getting their driver’s license or defensive driving certification. There aren’t any materials oriented at learner’s permits, so if you need to study for the learner’s permit class, you can probably make do with the free materials which they have listed on the site.
For people who need a certain number of driving hours to get their learner’s permit, Aceable can’t help.
Aceable’s classes have the following features:
- Online driver’s ed classes
- Online defensive driving classes
- Smartphone integration
- 6 months of roadside assistance with every purchase
- Responsive customer service
- Great videos and slides to introduce concepts
- Lighthearted dialogue for all ages
- Quizzes
- Practice DMV tests
- Multiple language options
- Provide instruction on basic car maintenance tasks
- Provide instruction on the rules of the road
- Provides instruction on how to avoid road rage
Aceable isn’t monolithic, however.
What Doesn’t Aceable Do?
Aceable doesn’t:
- Fulfill the number of hours of driving you’ll need to get your license
- Clear past traffic violations from your record any faster if traffic class was not mandated
- Give you any experience behind the wheel of a car
- Provide guidance for driving in other countries
- Offer courses in the majority of the 50 states
- Help remove restrictions from your license
- Provide instruction on more complex car maintenance tasks
- Provide instruction on how to navigate encounters with law enforcement
So, Aceable is a great substitute for the classroom portion of a traditional driver’s ed class. But you’ll still need to invest effort in getting your child practice behind the wheel.
For the people considering doing their traffic court-mandated defensive classes, Aceable might be the perfect solution. We’ll get into that a bit later. First, let’s delve deeper into the utility that Aceable’s basic driver’s ed class provides.
Why You Might Want To Consider Aceable’s Driver’s Ed Classes
Your child’s driving education is critical. A good driver’s ed will give them the know-how they need to succeed throughout their entire driving career. But a poor education will set them up for tickets, road rage, and accidents.
Aceable understands the gravity of driver’s education. That’s why they’ve compiled many hours of course material which your child can work through from wherever they are using their cell phone.
Each lecture has a number of slides which are narrated by the Aceable staff. Interspersed between the text are many diagrams illustrating common driving scenarios. Helpful tips abound. Every once in a while, there is a video to watch.
All of this material is high quality and proceeds at an acceptable pace. You can also listen to most of the lectures in Spanish, which is a bonus if it’s your family’s main language. Your child will learn everything about traffic signs and highway decorum.
Frequently, there are quizzes and other knowledge assessments which will help your child keep pace of how effectively they’re learning the material.
When your child is done with the curriculum, they can take practice tests for free within the system. These practice tests are identical to old tests issued by states, so they’re a great way to prepare for the written portion of the driver’s exam.
Notably, all of this instruction is targeted at driving through America. Though the driver’s license in America is interchangeable thanks to the international standard, American driving differs substantially from the conditions in other countries.
While this might be a topic of discussion in old-fashioned driver’s ed classes, it isn’t a focus of the Aceable curriculum. If you think your child will need to know how to navigate the insane traffic of Cairo or the crowded lanes of Florence, you will need to prepare them separately.
At the end of the day, the biggest problem with the Aceable curriculum is that you’ll still need to get your child behind the wheel for a set number of hours. This means that the curriculum might cut down on the amount of time that your child is away from home due to taking the classes.
But they’ll still have to be brought to driver’s ed or an accredited teacher as frequently as they would with a traditional program. So, a lot of the parental logistical benefits which seem like they would be derived from the program don’t work out.
Especially for something as core as driving, practice is one of the most reliable ways to reach theoretical competency by force of observing what everyone else does on the road. The Aceable curriculum can’t replicate that, even if its classroom is extremely effective.
In terms of cost-effectiveness, the Aceable curriculum for basic driver’s education is somewhat more expensive than in-person driving schools. Notably, as mentioned before, it does not have built-in driving hours at this price. This means that it isn’t as good of a deal as the in-person programs under most circumstances.
For an older person who is just now getting their driver’s license, the Aceable courses may not be the right fit. The courses are oriented in their humor and presentation towards juveniles, and understandably so. But a person who is no longer a teenager will likely find the material a bit underwhelming.
The jokey presentation gets old quickly for someone who is accustomed to learning material without the help of humor as a carrot to remain motivated. Likewise, the pace may be a bit too slow for an older person who is learning to drive and already has a lot of exposure to the concepts that are discussed.
For these people, there is not necessarily another comparable online driver’s ed course which will do the job better. Instead, it may be a better idea to simply go in-person to a driver’s education class establishment and ask to enroll in a class for adults.
While Aceable may add these classes in the future, for now, their driver’s education courses are best for adolescents and not so great for anyone else.
Aceable Driver’s Ed – Pros And Cons
Pros:
- Avoids the need to coordinate driving to and from class
- Entertaining format
- Easy to understand
- Consistently quizzes past knowledge
- Gives actionable tips on how to handle different driving situations
Cons:
- Still, need to drive and observe a set number of hours
- More expensive than low-tech equivalents
- More difficult to ask questions about specific situations
Why You Should Definitely Take Aceable’s Defensive Driving Courses
If you already know how to drive but you need to take court-ordered defensive driving courses, the entire picture of Aceable is different. The defensive driving courses have minimal or entirely absent road-hour requirements.
This means that you can complete the entire program and get the mark removed from your license faster than otherwise. Remember that other old marks won’t be removed because you took the course, however.
In the defensive driving course, the materials are a bit more straightforward than in the course designed for juveniles. There aren’t as many jokes or entertaining presentations. You’re given the material, and the quizzes are kept to a bare minimum.
You’ll still need to learn the material. Your state might have a test associated with passing the program at the end. But for the most part, the Aceable class gives you the ability to finish the defensive driving program in less than a week where it might take up to two months otherwise.
Think about it: if you attended one defensive driving class per week and you were required to attend 8 classes total to make up a semester, you’re already spending two entire months before you can repair your license standing.
With Aceable, it’s conceivable that you could finish it in a week. With one session after work each day, you can be back on track in no time flat.
But is the merit of the Aceable program equivalent to what you’d get elsewhere? Certainly. For court-ordered classes, the bar for in-person programs is extremely low. There are some basic qualifications that schools must meet before the government lets them provide the classes.
These regulations are never checked up on, though. Many of the driver’s ed classes keep their attention and effort focused on the juvenile crowd because they have to opt-in to be there. They can simply take their business somewhere else if they really dislike the way that the program is being taught.
For the people who are forced to be there, however, the calculus is different. The driving schools can afford to phone it in because the people who are there can’t easily switch to another provider without discarding the work that they’ve already put in.
For some people, even if they made the switch, they’d get into trouble with the traffic court again. So, the quality is usually much lower. With Aceable, this is not the case whatsoever. Aceable took the time to make the courses high quality once, which means that they are forever that way thanks to being online.
You won’t need to worry about half-asleep instructors barely providing you the bare minimum of information that you need to get your license restored to normal. Aceable’s program has everything you need – and nothing extraneous. It’s the perfect iteration of what a defensive driving course will be.
You’ll probably learn quite a few things from Aceable’s program, even if you fancy yourself as a good driver who caught a couple of tough breaks. Likewise, you will never feel as though Aceable is wasting your time.
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For a young driver looking to gain an extra edge, the defensive driving courses might be a good choice. The courses build on some of the material that young drivers learn in normal driver’s ed, which makes these drivers more capable on the road.
While some of the material is redundant, most of it is not. After your child has gone through the Aceable driver’s ed program and earned their license, it might be a good idea to send them back through the Aceable defensive driving curriculum as they’re getting the hang of the road.
The curriculum won’t turn an inexperienced driver into a hot shot, but it will definitely prevent a number of very common bad driving habits from forming in the first place. During the critical period of the time that a person is learning to drive, getting these lessons can make a massive difference.
In the defensive driving program, many of the ubiquitous yet incorrect driving habits are dissected and then corrected. In some areas, practices like “stealing a base” by turning left on a red light are common – and these are the kinds of habits which the defensive driving course will prevent from taking root.
Your young driver will learn how to reflexively avoid tailgating people and how to anticipate the actions of other drivers – and how to behave in accordance with the expectations of other drivers so as to make a safer road. It’s often difficult to get children to learn these lessons before they have an accident, so the program is especially valuable.
As far as the cost of the program goes, it’s a bit more expensive than the in-person alternatives, but it is entirely worth the added cost because of the extra convenience and the extra quality that you get.
The only major drawback of the Aceable program for defensive driving is that it is not offered in all 50 states. Only a few states are comfortable with letting Aceable take on the responsibility of teaching their defensive driving classes.
Likewise, you can’t transfer the credits from Aceable to any foreign driving schools. Nor will the lessons taught necessarily apply in a foreign environment.
Some behaviors which are ubiquitous in many parts of the world, as a brief honk when you are passing someone, often trigger for road rage in the US, and so they are discouraged. The Aceable program won’t teach you these things, which might leave you in the situation of having a foreign driver upset at you rather than an American.
With this tradeoff in mind, the Aceable program is still worthwhile. You should remember to check up on local driving habits and laws when you travel abroad, however.
Aceable Defensive Driving Course – Pros And Cons
Pros:
- Fulfills the court-ordered requirement
- Easy to take anywhere
- Streamlined and no-nonsense course content
- Friendly customer service
- Great add-on course for new drivers
Cons:
- Only available in a few states
- Doesn’t force you to practice
- May be more expensive than alternatives depending on where you are
The Verdict
Aceable is a great service owing to its increased convenience factor and high-quality materials. For the basic driver’s ed course, Aceable is a fairly good idea. The major problem is that you will still need your child to get instruction on the particulars of how to move their limbs while driving.
In contrast, for the mandated defensive driving courses, Aceable is an excellent idea which you should take advantage of if it is offered in your state. The convenience is a much greater deal when you take heading to work and getting denigrations removed from your license, and the added costs are worth it.
