Apparently, words like “increased” and “decreased” are considered to be “long and complicated”, so they have been replaced with “bigger” and “smaller” instead. I’ll take their word for it that this solution has addressed an actual problem, and look forward to future changes where “bigger” and “smaller” are replaced with “↑” and “↓” on the grounds that written words are too complicated.
Last December (2017), the driving test was changed to include use of a satnav, and two of the harder manoeuvres were replaced with two that my cat could do. From June 2018, learners will – at long last – be allowed to take lessons on motorways (with an instructor, and not with mum, dad, or best mate Kyle/Kylie).
A couple of weeks ago, I asked a new pupil if they knew about the changes, and they came out with something about “graduated licences”. I pointed out that graduated licences (GLs) have been talked about for almost as long as learners being allowed on motorways has (30 years at least), and although they are a good idea, their introduction is not going to happen in the near future.
I picked up this month’s copy of Intelligent Instructor and saw that Northern Ireland is to introduce such a scheme, and DfT is going to monitor the success of this with a view to introducing a scheme for the rest of the UK. It is worth pointing out that the scheme in NI is set for launch “in 2019/20”. Allowing for a suitable monitoring period, followed by consultation, then the likely changes in the Law, any similar scheme in the UK is unlikely to be seen before 2025. And even that is if there’s a highly favourable following wind (i.e. the same government and no other unrelated problems rearing their heads).
For a start off, IAM is involved, and it is already opposed to night-time curfews – which would be one of the most obvious things to include in any GL system). Then there is some nonsense about post-test training involving parents, when the parents are some of the worst offenders out there. And Theresa May’s hold on power is tenuous at best, so she’s unlikely to risk bringing in anything that loses votes.
The learners-on-motorways saga picked up steam almost ten years ago, but it’s taken until now – with several government changes and other delays along the way – to come to anything. Now, we have Brexit hanging over us like a skip load of manure ready to fall.
Anyone due to take their first driving test in the new format, a bit of advice.
make sure you can handle roundabouts and multi-lane junctions competently when following satnav instructions
make sure you can do it on roundabouts and junctions you may not have driven on before
The satnav gives instructions differently from the verbal instructions your instructor or an examiner might have previously given. Whereas you might previously have been asked to “turn right, third exit, follow the signs towards Nottingham [or whatever], the satnav will say something like “go around the roundabout, third exit, A52 [or whatever]”.
Although the examiner might give some limited guidance in some situations, you need to be able to use the satnav display and any road signs to work out where you want to go. In a way, you have got to construct the old-style instruction in your head from the new-style one.
All the manoeuvres (edit: a reader points out that the reverse bay park is still done only at the test centre) can now be done away from the test centre, and that means the test can travel further before having to head back. Some of the routes are MUCH longer than any of the ones from pre-December 2016. Consequently, if your instructor doesn’t know about them, you may not have driven on many of the roads and roundabouts.
The new test is actually easier than the old one if you look at it objectively. However, the details above mean that SOME people will inevitably find it harder.
I’m going to do another article about the satnav, and I’ll add a link to it on this one once I’ve written it. Here it is.
Various alerts from DVSA over the last week. These are summarised here. Not so much a “strike” but a “work to rule”.
It’s the same advice as usual. Not all examiners are union members, and not all those who are will necessarily be involved. Turn up for your test as normal, get a free rearranged date if it doesn’t go ahead. They also include advice to consider changing your test now to avoid problems – which sounds more ominous.
The action is scheduled to start 23 November 2017 and no end date is given.
From what DVSA has said, the action is primarily a continuation of that we experienced over a year ago, but with the added complication of the new driving test due to become active on 4 December. The union is apparently “trying to link the dispute with health and safety risks” associated with the new test.
As I have written elsewhere, I have no issue with the additions to the new test per se. However, I have huge issues with the removal of the turn in the road and corner reverse manoeuvres. The new manoeuvres are so simple that my cat could do them, and they in no way represent a like-for-like replacement. But they are not dangerous.
As I’ve said before, the PCS union is a fossil, and thank God that only a small number of examiners are thick enough to belong to it.
This is an old article from 2010, but it’s had a run of hits recently, and I have updated it to make sure it is current.
Someone has found the blog several times on the search term “abandoned tests”. I’m not exactly sure what they were looking for, but here’s a bit of information that is probably relevant.
I’ve had several abandoned tests in my career as an ADI. No matter how you look at it, they are embarrassing for you and traumatic for your pupil. One of them was around 2006 – the candidate tried to drive into a No Entry street leading off a roundabout after being told to “follow the road”.
When I discussed it with him afterwards he said that all that was going through his mind was “go straight ahead unless told otherwise” and that he’d seen the signs, but that instruction just ended up taking precedence in his head. He had been one of those learners who takes things in very slowly, even though he was a very intelligent lad (very good at Maths, and went on to study it at University). Once he’d made the error, he just lost it and the examiner pulled him over and abandoned the test. I had to walk about ¾ mile to find him where the examiner had stopped the car. He passed his test soon afterwards.
Another one was in 2008. That pupil was extremely slow, and although he was up to test standard, I don’t think his mind was ever going to be able to stay there. He got the Bay Park exercise right at the start of his test, and finished just on the line (which isn’t an automatic fail). He leaned out the door and said to the examiner “have I failed?”, and the examiner replied “I’ll tell you at the end”. Unfortunately, his mind was so one-tracked he was still thinking about the Bay Park when he attempted to drive into the gate at the end of the Test Centre driveway. The examiner abandoned it there and then, less than 5 minutes in, and about 5 metres outside the test centre. I vividly remember the examiner asking “is he on anything?”
In another example from 2013, a very nervous pupil made a simple mistake – and one which might not have been a test fail in the first place – but then cracked up and couldn’t continue. She was hysterical from what the examiner told me. She passed easily the 2nd time (which I had expected her to do the 1st).
And my most recent one was 2017, with another nervous pupil who had found learning difficult. The test hit her so badly that she pretty much forgot how to drive (I was sitting in on that one). She took further lessons with me and passed second attempt.
Although you always blame yourself, you can’t control what a candidate does when they are out there with the examiner. It all depends on what kind of people they are. All you can do is teach them as well as you possibly can.
In a nutshell, when an examiner abandons a test, he/she will typically leave the pupil with the car and inform you of the location when they get back to the centre (that was correct when I originally wrote this). Nowadays (2023 edit), they will always try to get back to the test centre unless the driving is so dangerous that would be a problem.
Sometimes (from what I’ve been told), the examiner might walk back with the pupil and have a chat. If you’re sitting in, you can take the examiner back to the test centre. The examiner cannot supervise a learner due to insurance cover, which is why he cannot bring them back once the test is terminated and the candidate becomes a learner again. Having said that, the examiners up here will make every effort to take the test to its conclusion back at the centre, and they will even dissuade candidates from terminating tests as long as there is no danger to them or the public.
Look at the date this was first published! It’s an old, old post! CCL definitely IS part of the Part 3 test in 2019.
A few years ago, on a now-defunct forum, one of the resident fossils took issue with comments I had made on the page where I provide the PST marking sheets for download. It was around the time DVSA (or DSA, as it then was) introduced CCL (client-centred learning) as part of the expected skills of an ADI. I had pointed out that since the Standards Check was going to be looking for evidence of CCL, and since learners were being taught using it, at some point the same approach would have to be used for ADI qualification on the Part2 and 3 tests.
My only point at the time was to indicate that once I had access to the necessary marking sheets for the new test, then I would make them available.
DVSA announced in 2016 that the Part 3 test would indeed be changing – an outcome so obvious that I can take no credit whatsoever for predicting it several years earlier. However, DVSA is not renowned for its efficiency or constancy, and although I cannot now recall the precise sequence of events (i.e. delays) to the change since its announcement, this latest email indicates that they still haven’t got the necessary Parliamentary approval, and the proposed start date of “late October” has been put back yet again.
No dates are given, but since any ADI with a test booked needs to be aware of what is happening, it would be logical to assume that the best-estimate start date for the new test has got to be at least as far away as the current longest waiting time between booking and taking a test. In other words, several months – and that’s several months from the date Parliamentary approval is gained, which may not be for several months in itself!
In short, don’t expect the new Part 3 testing regime to come into effect until 2018 (that’s my estimate). At least 2018 (that’s my cynicism).
Fair enough, I could be wrong, and they might get approval tomorrow [edit: they didn’t]. It came into effect in 2018], but I doubt it. Taking the Part 3 is stressful enough for people as it is. Knowing that the test was changing will have meant they will have been trained specifically for it, so to be told that it’s old-style PSTs is really going to screw them up.
On the one hand, it’s all the government’s fault for being so inefficient. But on the other hand, DVSA should not have announced a semi-specific start date before Parliamentary approval had been gained. It was obvious that it simply wasn’t going to happen to a fixed timescale.
It also makes me wonder when learners will finally be allowed on motorways. [edit: they are now – since June 2018 – anyway]. That also needs Parliamentary approval, and back in August it was expected “in 2018” (the ‘first half’ being implied). At this rate we’ll be lucky if it happens during the current government, which takes us right back to where we were before.
And these are the same twats trying to take us out of Europe. Make up a suitable sentence using the words “piss”, “up”, and “brewery”.
I originally wrote this way back in 2010, and it was only a simple couple of paragraphs thrown out following a search term used to find the blog. Since then, I get periodic hits on the same search term: driving examiners are arseholes. I had another today.
Assuming that it’s a candidate who is searching, the lack of a question format suggests they are seeking like-minded people to rant with, rather than to actually ask if examiners are arseholes. The person using the term probably thinks they’ve been hard done by on their test after having failed, and is seeking to blame the examiner – quite possibly, in my own experience, in spite of ample evidence from their drive that the examiner was right.
On the other hand, it isn’t beyond the realms of possibility that it is an instructor who has taken exception to one of his pupils failing their test. I’ve seen more than one take to a forum to vent their anger at a test fail they disagreed with (at least two in the last month [in 2010]).
Examiners are not arseholes.
The purpose of the driving test is to ensure that a candidate meets the bare minimum requirement to be allowed out on the roads unsupervised. The pass ‘mark’ is actually quite low, which means that anything below it is going to result in a fail. That’s the way it is, and nothing the candidate or instructor can do is going to change it.
If you don’t check your mirrors a few times when you should have, you will accrue faults, but miss them one time too many and you will fail. You will fail if you miss the check even once if there is someone behind or alongside you. The same is true of blind spot checks, and observations at junctions. You will get away with poor checks up to a point, but if it’s obvious you have a problem in this area you will get a serious fault (and if there’s someone behind or coming towards you, you will fail immediately).
You’re expected to stop at amber or red traffic lights. If you could have done safely, but don’t, you will fail. Furthermore, you’re expected to understand how traffic lights work – green filter arrows, etc. – and if you sit there holding up traffic when you should be moving off, then you’ll fail for that, too. If you completely miss traffic lights, or drive in such a way that it looks like you have, you will fail.
If you don’t stay in lane – demonstrate good “lane discipline” – you will accrue faults. If you weave across lanes when someone is behind you, you will fail. If you don’t realise you are doing it – and let’s face facts here, if you knew, you wouldn’t be – you will fail. If you change lanes without checking your mirrors first, and signalling if necessary, you will fail.
If you pull out in front of someone, you will fail. If you did it because you thought you “could make it”, you have no excuse whatsoever. If you stall you will accrue faults, and one stall too many will result in a fail. If you cause a hold up by stalling even once, you will almost certainly fail for that alone.
If the speed limit is 30mph, it doesn’t mean you can drive at 40 and expect to get away with it. Anything illegal is a fail. And if the speed limit is 60mph and the road is clear, doing 30 is causing a hold up and you’ll fail for driving like that. You need to see the road signs, and be confident enough to drive according to what they tell you.
If you drive too fast for given situations, you are going to accrue faults. If you approach a junction or a bend too fast, or slow down too late, if the examiner uses the brake because you haven’t, you will fail. Even if you think you were going to brake, if you were too late you will fail. Harsh braking will accrue faults, and one time too many will get you a fail. Do it in front of someone and you’ll fail immediately.
If you don’t stop at a STOP junction – and I mean stop absolutely dead – you will fail. It is illegal not to stop at these, and slowing to a crawl, no matter how slow it is, is NOT stopping.
If you mangle the gears every time you change them, you will accrue faults. If you use the wrong gear you will accrue faults. Do it one time to many and you will fail. Do it once at the wrong time – going into 1st when you wanted 3rd in moving traffic, for example – and you will fail.
This list is by no means complete. But the bottom line is that if you do any of those things and fail your test, it is because of your poor driving skills – not because the examiner is an arsehole.
It often amuses me the kinds of questions that get asked in Q&A columns in the media. Apart from the stupid ones along the lines of “does anyone else have a surname that rhymes with ‘spanner’, like mine does?” there are the ones that a child could answer simply by typing one sentence into Google – and yet the asker has wasted money on a stamp (there’s no way they’d have used email) and got themselves into print.
Readers who have been following the blog for a while will know that I am sometimes scathing with my comments about other instructors – the dickheads who try to do a manoeuvre 3 metres behind me on a 500 metre stretch of empty road, or who turn up in a small car park I’m using and take over with their own manoeuvre (until I explain a few things to them) get frequent mentions. I’ve not gone off on one for a while, but flicking through this month’s Intelligent Instructor magazine I had to shake my head when I read the Readers’ Questions section.
If you’re an ADI, there is absolutely no excuse for not knowing that the driving test is changing in December. Likewise, there’s no excuse for not being subscribed to DVSA announcements, nor of being aware of new posts to Despatch (DVSA’s blog).
So I was surprised to see someone asking what the changes to the Show Me/Tell Me questions are going to be.
For God’s sake! DVSA sent an email alert back in July explaining the changes in detail. They did a Despatch blog article covering the test changes, including the questions back in August, covering the wording the examiners will use. The Show Me/Tell Me questions are given in black and white in both of those. If you Google “show me tell me december 2017” four of the top seven hits are DVSA pages either as mentioned above, or informational videos on YouTube (I’m the seventh). Then there are dozens and dozens of other instructor sites which talk about it, and link to the DVSA articles. And DVSA even sent out a booklet to all instructors last month with all this in it.
I was similarly surprised to see someone else ask how the examiner will word the instruction to pull up on the right (one of the new “manoeuvres”).
It’s funny, but sometimes when you’re on a lesson and your pupil comes to, say, a roundabout (which they’ve been struggling with). They’ll go through all the motions and negotiate it perfectly. You think you’ve cracked it, and you’ll say something encouraging like “that was great. Well done. I liked how you checked there was enough room to go with that car coming towards you.” And they say “what car?”
I can’t help get the same feeling when ADIs ask dumb questions like this. I mean, what the hell are they doing on their lessons if they don’t know this basic stuff?
The only real difference to the SMTM questions is that, from December, some of them will be asked while the candidate is driving.
As an aside, I had someone on test recently, and the examiner asked him to show how he would clean the windscreen if it was dirty. My pupil duly operated the front washers, at which point the examiner added: “how about the back one?” Sneaky! He demonstrated it, but that’s one of the new questions.
Anyway, I have some misgivings about asking questions on the move, since they will require additional multitasking by the candidate. I’ve got more than a couple who have a job monotasking as it is. I think I mentioned this a while back, but one of my current lot has a ball stud in her upper lip, which she is wont to fiddle with while she’s driving (well, she doesn’t anymore, as a result of the story I’m about to relate). On one particular lesson, we were turning right at a mini-roundabout. Given that roundabouts are her main nemesis, and that she had applied almost full lock to turn right in this instance, you would think that, when the ball fell off her stud at the precise moment she needed to steer back into the target road, she would prioritise her steering and not, for example, a headlong dive into the foot well to try and catch the ball. I expected the first option. She chose the second. I think I screamed.
The one particular question that seems to be winding up a lot of instructors out there is the one about testing the horn. The current question, asked at the start of the test whilst stationary, is:
Show me how you would check that the horn is working
From December, it will be asked on the move, and will take the form:
When it’s safe to do so, can you show me how you’d operate the horn?
This is getting a lot of ADIs into a tizzy, because they don’t understand the Highway Code or associated rules properly.
The Highway Code says:
Rule 112
The horn. Use only while your vehicle is moving and you need to warn other road users of your presence. Never sound your horn aggressively. You MUST NOT use your horn
while stationary on the road
when driving in a built-up area between the hours of 11.30 pm and 7.00 am
except when another road user poses a danger.
Law CUR reg 99
Let’s clarify what this means. This is the only part covered by the MUST NOT (i.e. there is an actual law):
You MUST NOT use your horn
while stationary on the road
when driving in a built-up area between the hours of 11.30 pm and 7.00 am
except when another road user poses a danger.
I’ve actually seen someone quote that section minus the two bullet point conditions, and proffer it as evidence that DVSA is wrong. They’re actually suggesting that it says “You MUST NOT use your horn except when another vehicle poses a danger”. Sometimes, I’m almost at a loss for words – then I remember the blog, and I’m not anymore. That is not what it says, and it is not what it means. And the rest of Rule 112 is completely advisory.
A private car park, your driveway, your garage, etc. are not “on the road”. The test centre car park is not “on the road”. If it was, how on earth could you ever legally test the damned thing to see if it was working?
Now, if you look up CUR reg 99, the prohibited time period of 11.30-07.00 specifically refers to being “in motion” and on a “restricted road” (i.e one which has anything other than NSL assigned to it). So you are not breaking any law if you sound the horn on your driveway, etc. during that time period (or if you’re on an NSL road). You’d be a complete arsehole if you did it needlessly, but you are not breaking this law or Rule 112. There is absolutely nothing in CUR reg 99 or Rule 112 which says you can’t test the horn while you are driving during the day, or if you’re on your driveway, in your garage, or in a private car park – at any time. Common sense dictates that you shouldn’t do it if it going to confuse or annoy people, and although it is frowned upon to use the horn “aggressively”, even this does not go against CUR reg 99 or Rule 112 as far as any laws go.
What it boils down to is that examiners are not going to be doing anything wrong if they ask candidates to demonstrate the horn safely on their tests whilst driving along. The SMTM wording doesn’t state explicitly that the horn has to actually be sounded, either. It says “show me how” – and that could easily amount to a miming action, which most pupils seem to go for by default when asked, in my experience (even if they sound it, they do it as though it is going to bite them and it gets a brief “pap”). After 4 December, if someone tries to test it by giving it a 10-second burst, that would reflect very badly on their instructor in my opinion, as it already appears that some are preparing to make these changes as painful as possible to everyone concerned in order to register their protest.
All of mine are going to be taught as follows when we cover this:
If the examiner asks you to show him how you would test the horn, I want you to explain how you would do it and point to the bit of the steering wheel you would push. Ask him if he’d like you to actually do it. If he says yes, give it a quick toot if you think it’s safe to do it. DON’T do it on a bend, at a junction, or while there are pedestrians and other cars around.
And we will practice that during lessons, as we will the other on-the-move questions.
I think the problem with some ADIs out there is that they have been conditioned over many years of misunderstanding the rules to believe DVSA is breaking the law. Newer ADIs are naïve, eager to jump on the anti-DVSA bandwagon, and were probably trained by people who have these misunderstandings to start with, thus perpetuating the confusion. It would make life a whole lot simpler if they all just acknowledged their error and got on with the job instead of trying to defend the indefensible.
Remember the KISS principle. If it was absolutely forbidden to use the horn on the move, the rules would state this explicitly and unambiguously. They do not do so.
As I said earlier, I have misgivings about these SMTM changes just because I know that some of my pupils – past and present – would likely try to drive into a field as they shifted their entire focus from the road to the switch, dial, or button in question (some of them even try that when they see another vehicle, a dog or cat, a pigeon, or some other distraction for too long). I’m worried – perhaps needlessly – that some are potentially flaky enough to fall back to that when under pressure (and I’ve been proven wrong on many occasions, so it’s probably me). On the other hand, it provides a valuable teaching topic on lessons to make them able to do it properly.
Looking at it pragmatically, if someone can’t drive and operate the very controls they will need in the circumstances they will likely encounter when they pass their tests, they shouldn’t be on the roads. If they can’t do it safely on their tests after December, they won’t be. And that’s good.
I saw a discussion about this on a forum. It was to do with terminated tests and “what happens next?”
On more than one occasion since I became an instructor, a pupil has done something which they know has resulted in a fail. And on more than one occasion, the examiner has persuaded them to continue with their test – even though the pupil wanted to stop – and carefully routed them back to the test centre. Also on more than one occasion, they haven’t actually failed (or if they have, it was for something else, and not what they originally thought).
Quite recently, a pupil of mine who is an excellent driver – but who is as mad as a bag of cats a lot of the time due to personal issues – had a meltdown and suddenly couldn’t even make the car move (she’s apparently taken her test six times previously).The examiner calmed her down, got her moving, and they came back to the test centre after about 20-25 minutes. I knew something was up, because when I’m at the test centre reading stuff online, I also monitor where the car is using my tracker, and I wondered why they were heading back so soon.
As an aside, that same pupil has recently exercised her mad as a bag of cats side by not turning up to a lesson she had arranged and confirmed, and not responded to my texts, or provided me with one of her immense range of carefully catalogued and indexed excuses. I suppose there’s only so many times you can lose your phone, or have it mysteriously not receive texts, or fall down the stairs, or off a chair, or into a hedge, and still have people believe you. She is now an ex-pupil, even though she doesn’t know it yet.
But back to the main thread. I do not give a flying f*** what the examiner writes on the test sheet in these cases. I don’t care if they tick the wrong box, apply the “incorrect” amount of pressure to their pen strokes, forget to flick their wrists properly as they mark a fault, add up the faults incorrectly, and so on. Some other instructors do, though, even where they acknowledge that the pupil was correctly failed.
Although examiners who abandon tests are supposed to stop the car, inform the candidate, then leave the car and make their way back to the test centre, many of them are human beings. This is especially true in Nottingham, and they will try as hard as possible to take the test to its natural conclusion back in the test centre car park. And yes, sometimes this may even happen if the test is effectively not completed for some reason.
I like it that way, and don’t need any arseholes trying to interfere with it.
I must admit that wasn’t aware this was being looked into, but from today the Theory Test is changing slightly to make it “more accessible”.
Last December (2017), the driving test was changed to include use of a satnav, and two of the harder manoeuvres were replaced with two that my cat could do. From June 2018, learners will – at long last – be allowed to take lessons on motorways (with an instructor, and not with mum, dad, or best mate Kyle/Kylie).
Various alerts from DVSA over the last week. These are 
Look at the date this was first published! It’s an old, old post! CCL definitely IS part of the Part 3 test in 2019.
In April, I reported that 
I saw a discussion about this on a forum. It was to do with terminated tests and “what happens next?”