The short answer
Learning in winter is harder but more instructive: wet, dark, poor visibility and slippery surfaces are precisely the conditions in which new drivers later have the most trouble. The compulsory night drives are also far easier to schedule in winter, because it gets dark early.
Enrolments at every driving school rise in spring and fall away in November. Understandable — and from a training point of view exactly the wrong way round.
What winter brings with it
- Wet roads and longer braking distances — not as a number, but as a feeling through the pedal
- Leaves and loose grit in bends, particularly out towards Grafenberg and Gerresheim
- Low sun morning and afternoon, which can make a traffic light disappear completely
- Misted and frozen windows: clearing them, setting the ventilation, and why a peephole is not an option
- Early darkness, and therefore plenty of scope for the night drives
By the braking. Somebody who learned in the wet goes onto the brake earlier and more softly — not because they were told to, but because the car made the point once. Summer learners reach that same moment in November, except by then they are on their own with no second pedal beside them.
The scheduling advantage nobody mentions
Between November and February, driving lessons are easier to get than in May. People who push on through winter tend to drive more regularly — and regularity is the biggest single lever on the total number of lessons, bigger than any question of talent.
What you need for it
Not much: shoes with a thin sole that are not soaked, and a little more time in hand, because de-icing and traffic both take longer in winter. The cars are of course on winter tyres.
Snow in Düsseldorf
Rare, and usually only for a few days. When it happens we still drive — deliberately somewhere with space rather than on the Nordstraße. They are the most instructive hours of the year.
Theory dates are in the timetable; it runs through the winter unchanged.
What to take away
Winter hands you the conditions in which new drivers make most of their mistakes, with a second brake pedal beside you. Starting in spring does not save you those hours, it postpones them to your first winter alone in the car.