[supermax]

Aved, nice and detailed post! Unlike you, I had near zero prior experience of driving (only a handful of lessons I'd taken in India, nearly 10 years ago), so I had to learn from scratch. One thing I've noted is that a lot of immigrants think that driving schools are out to fleece them, and I get it; the lessons are very expensive, but Sweden is an expensive country, and salaries and running expenses are high. My own experience has been that driving schools try to ensure that you are ready for the exam, before allowing you to take a shot. I don't personally believe that they needlessly ask people to do more lessons. I know people who have said that they were told that they needed 10 to 15 more lessons, but they took the test and cleared it. There's always luck involved in the test, and on the given day, if we are lucky, our weaknesses may not be exposed, and we get away with it, but schools try their best to identify and fix all of the flaws, and yes, at times it's a time consuming affair. I didn't have the option of a private tutor initially, so had to do many, many lessons at the school, and I later switched to a private tutor. With me, I really needed the time on the road to get confidence and iron out my flaws. In the end, I cleared both my theory and driving test in the first attempt, but my expenses were just north of 60KSEK. Could I have cleared the test if I'd tried, say 10 lessons before? Probably, but I waited till I felt safe myself. I guess we all have to make our own decision at some point.