Driving School: Enrolment, Theory and Test Questions in Chat

People who want a driving licence rarely ask their questions during office hours. In the evening, teenagers and parents write in to ask from what age they can start, which licence class a moped or a motorbike needs, which documents are still missing, when the theory lessons take place and what it will all cost. The next morning the same questions are waiting in the inbox and on the answering machine. A large share of them can be answered from documents a driving school already has: the lesson plan, the published price list, the enrolment leaflet, details of branches and office hours. The legal basis is set out in the German Driving Licence Regulation (Fahrerlaubnis-Verordnung, FeV). This article shows which questions a chat assistant can take on for a driving school, where it refers to the licensing authority and the testing body, and why it promises neither test dates nor a pass.

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Labels in the illustration

• Enrolment
• enquiry in chat
• Application
• at the authority
• Theory
• lessons, test
• Driving lessons
• with the instructor
• Practical test
• after the theory
• Earliest point, measured against the minimum age (FeV)
• set by school
• 6 months before
• 3 months before
• set by school
• 1 month before
• Who sets the date or admission
• Driving school
• Authority
• Examiner
• Instructor
• Examiner
• What the assistant handles in the chat
• Take enquiry
• List documents
• Explain process
• Booking request
• Explain process
• No promise on test dates or on passing
• Test dates are set by the official examiner (Section 16 para. 3, Section 17 para. 5 FeV).

From enrolment to the test: who decides what

What a driving school is asked before enrolment

Questions to a driving school follow a pattern. Before enrolment they concern the licence class and age, the documents and how long everything takes. After enrolment, theory lessons, driving lessons and the test come in, and shortly before the test the question of the date. Many of these questions come from parents, and many arrive outside office hours when nobody answers the phone. An assistant on the website can answer them at any time of day, provided the answer is in the school’s documents. How this looks for service providers in general is shown on the page about the assistant for service providers.

The table does not separate by difficulty but by responsibility. The middle column holds what applies to every learner and can be looked up in a document of the school or in the regulation. The right-hand column holds what requires a decision in an individual case or lies with a body the school itself has no access to. An assistant that knows this line answers the middle column in full and hands over the right-hand one instead of guessing.

Licence classes and minimum age

The most frequent question before enrolment is: from when am I allowed? The answer is in a table in the Driving Licence Regulation. For classes B and BE the minimum age is 18 years (Section 10 para. 1 FeV), and with participation in accompanied driving under Section 48a FeV it is 17 years (Section 10 para. 1 FeV). For the other classes the same table sets its own values, for class A graded by previous licences. The assistant gives these values with the reference and links them to what the school itself offers: which classes it trains, at which branch and with which vehicles is not in the regulation but in its documents.

• Class AM: 15 years; until the 16th birthday with the condition that the licence may only be used in Germany (Section 10 para. 1 FeV).
• Class A1: 16 years (Section 10 para. 1 FeV).
• Class A2: 18 years (Section 10 para. 1 FeV).
• Class A: 24 years with direct access, 20 years after holding class A2 for at least two years (Section 10 para. 1 FeV).
• Classes B and BE: 18 years, 17 years with accompanied driving; until the 18th birthday only in Germany and only when accompanied by a person named in advance (Section 10 para. 1 and Section 48a para. 2 FeV).

Documents: eye test, first aid, photo

After the age question comes the question about documents. The Driving Licence Regulation lists them in Section 21 para. 3 FeV: official proof of place and date of birth, a photo meeting the requirements of the Passport Regulation, an eye test certificate for classes AM, A1, A2, A, B, BE, L and T, and proof of first aid training. The training comprises at least nine teaching units (Section 19 para. 1 FeV) of 45 minutes each; the eye test is carried out by an officially recognised eye testing centre, and the certificate may be no more than two years (Section 12 para. 7 FeV) old when the application is made. In the application the applicant also names the driving school providing the training. Where an eye test and a first aid course are offered nearby is often already on the school’s website; these notes belong in the knowledge base.

• Official proof of place and date of birth; which documents the authority accepts for this is on its page or in the school’s leaflet.
• Photo meeting the requirements of the Passport Regulation.
• Eye test certificate from an officially recognised eye testing centre, or an ophthalmologist’s certificate.
• Proof of first aid training, issued by a body officially recognised for this purpose.
• Name of the training driving school in the application to the authority.

The application is not made at the driving school but at the licensing authority or the body responsible under state law, in writing or in electronic form (Section 21 para. 1 FeV). It can be made no earlier than six months (Section 21 para. 4 FeV) before reaching the minimum age for the class concerned. How the application is submitted locally, whether online, by post or with an appointment at the citizens’ office, is up to each authority. The assistant should therefore only pass on what the school has stored about it and refer to the responsible authority’s page for everything else.

Planning theory lessons and driving lessons

With theory lessons, chat questions are mostly about times and procedures: when does the next course start, can I join a course that is already running, what happens if I miss a lesson? The answers are in the lesson plan and the school’s rules. Which training content is mandatory is governed by the Driving School Training Regulation (Fahrschüler-Ausbildungsordnung), to which the FeV refers. Before the theory test, the applicant must present the examiner with a confirmation from the owner of the driving school that the required training content has been completed (Section 16 para. 3 FeV); completion of the training may lie no more than two years (Section 16 para. 3 FeV) back. Only the school knows whether a learner’s lessons are complete. The assistant explains the rule but does not check anyone’s training progress. How education providers handle course plans and remaining places in the chat is also described in the article on course providers and further training.

• Lesson plan with times, rooms and topics, separated by branch and with the date from which it applies.
• Rules on joining and making up lessons: whether learners can join a course that is already running and how missed lessons are made up.
• Learning materials: which study materials or learning programs the school hands out and how learners get access.
• Course of practical training: basic training, special drives on country roads, on the motorway and in the dark, test preparation, described the way the school carries them out.
• Appointment types for driving lessons with duration, lead time and time windows, so that the assistant can name suitable free times; meeting points belong in the knowledge base.

Driving lessons are often arranged directly with the instructor, by phone or message. An assistant can add to this route: it names free times from the stored appointment types and takes a booking request, which the instructor or the office confirms. The appointment only becomes binding with this confirmation; the assistant does not synchronise with an external calendar. The appointment types should therefore reflect how driving lessons are actually allocated, for example by class and duration. How this works in detail is shown on the page about the booking assistant.

Costs only from the school’s price list

“What does the licence cost?” is one of the first questions and at the same time one that cannot be answered with a single figure. The total cost depends on how many driving lessons someone needs, and that only becomes clear during the training. An assistant should therefore not estimate a sum but name the components from the school’s price list and explain which of them are fixed and which depend on the number of lessons. With XICBOT, the assistant names no price without a stored basis, and a check compares price statements in the answer against the source. What to bear in mind with prices in the chat in general is described in the article on prices in the chat.

• Basic fee for registration and theory lessons, as stated in the price list.
• Driving lesson per unit, separated by class where prices differ.
• Special drives on country roads, on the motorway and in the dark, with the price per unit.
• Test fee: the amount the school charges for presenting the learner at the theory and the practical test.
• Third-party costs such as fees of the authority and the testing body, eye test, first aid course and photo, as a note that they come on top, not as an estimated amount.

Test dates are not set by the school

Towards the end of the training comes the question of the test date, often combined with a preferred date before the holidays. A look at the regulation helps here, because it allocates responsibility clearly. The applicant proves their competence in a theory test and a practical test (Section 15 para. 1 FeV), taken by an officially recognised expert or examiner for motor vehicle traffic (Section 15 para. 5 FeV). The licensing authority commissions the responsible technical testing body with the test (Section 22 para. 4 FeV). The expert or examiner sets the time and place of the theory test (Section 16 para. 3 FeV), and for the practical test the time, starting point and route within the test location (Section 17 para. 5 FeV). The driving school usually registers learners for the test and passes on the date; it cannot set it.

The date itself is subject to rules that are the same for every applicant. The theory test may be taken no earlier than three months (Section 16 para. 3 FeV) before reaching the minimum age, the practical test only after passing the theory and no earlier than one month (Section 17 para. 1 FeV) before reaching the minimum age. The practical test must be taken within twelve months (Section 18 para. 2 FeV) of passing the theory test, otherwise the theory test loses its validity. A failed test may not be repeated before a reasonable period has passed, as a rule at least two weeks (Section 18 para. 1 FeV). The practical test is taken at the place of the main residence or at the place of school, vocational training, studies or work; if that place is not a test location, the licensing authority designates a nearby one, and it may also allow a different test location (Section 17 para. 3 FeV). Deriving a date from these rules is not the assistant’s job: with XICBOT, a statement on which deadline applies in one’s own case or whether it has been met falls under the fixed limit on legal advice. If a question touches it, the assistant says that it must not judge this and names the way to the office. It can explain the procedure as described in the school’s leaflet and states a deadline given there with its source; when the test is possible at the earliest in an individual case is clarified by the office.

Taking enrolment as an enquiry

Anyone who wants to enrol after the conversation should be able to start in the chat without looking for a second form. The assistant asks for the details the school needs for an enrolment and creates an enquiry from them. Which details are mandatory is set by the school; if one is missing, nothing is handed over. The enquiry is only created once the visitor has confirmed it in the conversation. It does not replace the training contract: that is concluded at the driving school, and how this works for minors is settled by the school with the parents. More on capturing enquiries in the conversation is on the page about the lead assistant.

• Desired class, for class B with a note on whether accompanied driving is planned.
• Age or month of birth, so that the office can place the start; ID document data does not belong in the chat.
• Previous licences: whether a licence is already held, for example class AM or A1, or a licence from another country.
• Branch and preferred start, if the school has several branches or fixed course starts.
• Contact route with name, email address or phone number, as the school has made mandatory.

Callback and handover to the office

Not every question belongs in the chat. Anyone who wants to convert a licence from another country, is starting again after their licence was withdrawn, or wants to know whether an illness or poor eyesight stands in the way of a licence needs a conversation with the office and often with the authority or a doctor. For such cases the assistant offers a callback request: with a preferred time and the matter, not just the phone number. The callback request is also a writing step and only goes out after confirmation; when calling back, the team has the conversation history in front of it. With XICBOT, legal advice and medical information are fixed limits that no setting lifts, as is a binding financing offer when someone asks about paying in instalments. What makes a good callback request is described in the article on the callback request in chat.

What belongs in a driving school’s knowledge base

An assistant is as good as the documents it answers from. With XICBOT, answers are built from the retrieved context, not from the general knowledge of the language model, and an answer usually carries a source reference pointing to the passage. For a driving school this means: whatever is not in the knowledge base, the assistant usually does not answer, and that is intended. Maintained question-and-answer pairs go out in their stored wording when they match, without paraphrasing; this suits sentences that should read exactly as written, for example on cancelling a driving lesson. If someone writes in another language, the assistant answers in that language from the same knowledge base, provided the question reaches the matching passage; this can be checked before release with test questions in the language concerned.

• Published price list with all individual prices and the date from which it applies.
• Lesson plan per branch, with notes on holiday periods and special courses.
• Enrolment leaflet with the documents under Section 21 FeV, notes on the eye test and the first aid course, and the way to the responsible authority.
• Course of training from enrolment to the test, with the rules from the FeV and who is responsible for which step.
• Branches, office hours and contact routes, including the rule on cancelling driving lessons.

How reliably an assistant stays bound to its sources can be measured instead of asserted. In our own measurement series 42 of 48 answers carried a source reference; the count covered questions whose answer is in the knowledge base, and six carried no source reference. Why this reference matters to learners and parents is described in the article on source references in chat answers. If you would like to see how this looks with your lesson plan and your price list, get in touch.

Frequent questions