Rant

It’s incredibly frustrating how broken the Swedish driving license system is for foreigners, as usual. The driving tests are absurdly strict, but driving lessons are outrageously expensive, easily costing tens of thousands of kronor — yet if you’re Swedish, you can sidestep a huge chunk of that cost by practicing with a parent or friend as your handledare. But as a foreigner with no local support or prior experience, you’re fucked. You’re forced to rely entirely on expensive lessons and navigate a system that feels more designed to filter people out than actually teach them how to drive. And then they fail you because you stalled a couple of times in a car you see first time in your life.

Not much solace to you now, perhaps, but once you have your licence, you can know it will be because you can be trusted to drive a car you have never driven before (getting a rental from an airport and driving out onto local infrastructure is NOT somewhere you wanted to be found lacking), and are ready to drive in one of the - if not *the* safest countries in the world to be on the road, either as a vehicle user or pedestrian.

You will also reap the benefits of lower insurance - average prices (according to google are 1/10th that of US insurance rates (!!!!), and half that of the UK, to quote the two markets I looked at.
So yes, whilst it IS expensive to learn to drive, as a US citizen, for example, you will recover that expense after perhaps two years of actually owning a car, just in cheaper insurance.

Keep at it though - my ex, a native Swede and at the time a medical student (so no dummy, is what I’m trying to get at) failed 4 times and was going to give up trying. I convinced her to carry on, and just try to be less nervous (yeah, easy, right?) and she passed on the fifth time. That was in Göteborg 20 years ago, don’t know know if it was more difficult there and then, but there you are. If you want that licence, you WILL get it, and you WILL sneer in your later years at all those who complain how difficult it is.

Or, give up, and take the bus. Simples

Totally agree.
The system for learning to drive is just as broken like the rest of institutions in the country, they are built for Swedes primarily.
Not to forget to mention the absolute BS that you have to go through that is unnecessary or impractical to get that damn license.
This guy says you fail 4-5 times and have to keep trying, I agree with him but…That’ll probably reach 2-4K € in costs, might as well do it somewhere else in the EU if you must do it more than twice and don’t have the financial means.

You are preaching to the choir. On top of that I have looked back at my journey and realised that my two driving instructors have been lazy and inconsistent in how they have taught me how to drive, at times. It’s ridiciosly expensive and It feels quite stressful after I have spent 50000 kr on driving lessons and everything else.