The short answer
The motorway drive covers four teaching units and is part of the twelve special drives. It trains joining via the acceleration lane, lane choice, following distance at speed, overtaking with proper observation, roadworks and queues, and leaving the motorway. It is compulsory regardless of ability.
Motorway sounds like the hardest of the special drives and for most people it is not. It is the most orderly road there is: one direction, no junctions, no pedestrians. What makes it demanding is something else — the speed at which distances shrink.
The acceleration lane
The first hurdle and the one that most often goes wrong. The lane is for accelerating, not for waiting: arriving at its end doing 60 and then looking for a gap means there is none. Accelerate, look over your shoulder, choose the gap, go — in that order and without a pause in between.
Distance at a speed you cannot feel
At 120 km/h the car covers 33 metres a second. Half the speedometer reading in metres — so 60 — is the guideline, and on the motorway it looks like far too much, because everyone around you is driving closer. That is precisely why these four hours practise it rather than explain it.
On a first overtake many people stay in the left lane long after the right one is clear — not deliberately, but because their eyes are fixed forward and the right-hand mirror briefly stops existing. We say nothing at that point and wait to see whether it comes on its own. For most people it does, on the third or fourth attempt, and after that it stays.
What else comes up
- Roadworks: narrow lanes, offset routing, and why your eyes have to go further ahead rather than to the barrier
- Queues: spotting them early, hazard lights, the emergency corridor
- Services and exits: slowing on the deceleration lane, not before it
- Wet roads and aquaplaning if the weather cooperates — which in Düsseldorf it often does
Why nowhere else works
There is no rural road where you could practise merging at 100 km/h, and no training ground with an acceleration lane. That is why the motorway hours are compulsory rather than allocated as needed.
Around Düsseldorf we have the A46, A52, A57 and A3 — four very different motorways, which for these hours is an advantage. The twelve special drives are set out separately, and the rates are on the price page.
What to take away
The motorway does not train fast driving, it trains looking early. Everything that goes wrong there goes wrong because somebody looked too late — and the four hours exist so that the first time is not on your own.