Drive my car
By : Celia Barnes
Survivor: Auto-Express' owner, Wojciech Mierzynski.
Driving instructor Marek Piasecki doesn't wear a seatbelt even if he's got a novice behind the wheel.
It's not that he takes a cavalier approach to life, but rather as Piasecki says it's a necessary precaution in case of emergencies on Warsaw's busy roads.
"With a learner driver, my head has to spin around all the time," he explained. "If my belt locked, it could be a disaster."
Students have mistaken the accelerator for the brake, or confused their left and right like one notorious case at a school outside Warsaw, where a woman mistakenly turned in to the path of an oncoming truck transporting a load of sand: She survived; not so the instructor.
Despite the daily stress, Piasecki, who has been in the game for two years, manages to look as cool as a "But people regularly leave this profession because they can't stand the tension," he said.
Piasecki is one of four teachers at Auto-Express. He may make it sound like it's of the "white-knuckle" driving school variety, but last year Auto-Express was rated No. 76 out of Warsaw's 180 driving schools in terms of how many of its students pass their driving test on the first try. The level of competition has increased since then, following a blitz by the Warsaw Voivodship on school standards, which saw just 167 driving schools including Auto-Express deemed fit to continue business.
Around 350 students mainly 17-year-olds eager to drive for the first time pass through Auto-Express' doors each year. Under Polish regulations, every one of them is obliged to have at least 20 hours of driving instruction (at zl. 40 per hour) before attempting their exam.
The company was started in 1991 by a round-faced, jovial man named Wojciech Mierzynski.
Mierzynski, 49, used to spend up to nine hours a day teaching on Warsaw's roads. But a combination of nerves and mounting office work keeps him behind the desk these days. Poland's deflated economic state, and high unemployment rates, have seen the number of Auto-Express customers decline by 30% over the past 12 months. On top of this, business typically experiences a 10% seasonal dip in winter.
"People just don't have money these days (to pay for driving lessons) and yes, I'm thinking about the future," Mierzynski said. "I'm just thinking of how to guarantee my life status right now."
He runs through some of his costs: There's annual car insurance for each of his three Daewoo Lanos school cars up to zl. 5,000, or 100% more than standard car insurance (but tempered by the fact that Daewoo gives a 20% discount to driving schools on the purchase price) his social security payments to the Social Insurance Administration (ZUS), worth 48% of staff wages; and of course, rental on his tiny downtown Warsaw office and the small parking lot out front where students practice their reverse parks and other maneuvers.
But Mierzynski is careful to point out that things aren't all gloom and doom. He and his wife, Jolanta, can still afford to vacation three times a year and these days they tend to go by plane rather than car.
When they first married, Mierzynski promised his wife that one day they would be able to afford holidays to exotic locations. At the time, he was working as an IT specialist for the state-owned trucking and transport company, Pekaes. His wages barely kept life and limb together so he got his instructor's license and started giving lessons. His ultimate goal was to create his own driving school.
"Cars have always appealed to me, so I thought it was a good idea to earn decent money and work in an honest way (but) I had to earn money to buy cars," Mierzynski said. "There was no chance to get credit at that time."
The only solution was to start visiting Germany on a three-month tourist visa, and work on construction sites to save up cash.
Soon he had enough for a Mercedes to use as a Warsaw taxi. Then he saved for two Maly Fiat 126p's the then-compulsory make and model used by the vovoidship traffic centers, where all driving exams are conducted for a zl. 84 fee.
"Everything was possible for people who had cash," Mierzynski said.
He discreetly hints that cash could still have a role to play in today's driving school market.
"It's hard to talk about that, but my impression is that it would be very wise if there was more than one person to judge a student's skills," Mierzynski said. "It would be good if, at the exam, the learner was also accompanied by his instructor. You could then avoid corruption allegations."
Steps have already been taken to minimize cheating on the written exam. As of July 1, applicants must pass a custom-made computerized examination of 20 randomly picked questions instead of the old mulitiple-choice tests.
