This article was published in 2015, but I’ve started getting hits this year, and DVSA has sent out the first 2016 reminder, so it’s worth an update.
DVSA has posted a new blog entry [original article from 2015] concerning bad weather and driving tests. As we know, apart from being rocket scientists, doctors, psychiatrists, life coaches, political raconteurs, with most having been refused entry into Mensa for being too intelligent, the average driving instructor is also a highly skilled meteorologist.
As DVSA says, they have a duty of care. However, what they don’t say is that tests are pretty much only ever cancelled when it is icy or particularly foggy. I don’t blame them one bit, since the majority of test candidates will not have driven in fog or snow/ice before (many will have cancelled lessons for just that reason in the past, or their instructor will have) and doing it for the first time on their tests is a pretty risky operation for anyone within a 2 mile radius of them.
I can’t understand why instructors get so worked up about bad weather cancellations. Fair enough, it’s lost income (well, for most it is – some still charge their pupils), but it isn’t as if the well-run driving school is going to have a turnover based totally on income from driving tests. It’s more like a maximum of two or three a week.
My own advice is:
- don’t book early morning tests in winter
- instructors should avoid having too many tests in a single week… especially in winter
- instructors should warn pupils at the outset that tests get cancelled in bad weather
- instructors shouldn’t act like it’s never happened before in front of the pupil if they get cancelled
- instructors shouldn’t blame DVSA
You can whinge and whine as much as you want if tests get cancelled, but you won’t change the test centre manager’s mind. Life is much more relaxing if you just accept that it happens and learn to deal with it. That way, you can minimise – or even eliminate – any final loss incurred, and help to prevent childish and inaccurate advice being passed on to future generations of learners.
How does that saying go? If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.
The comments began almost immediately back in 2015. One ADI questioned DVSA’s criterion for cancelling due to fog, citing “bad mist/moderate fog” as an example of a poor reason for tests being postponed. As I said, many ADIs believe that they are skilled meteorologists.
Many test candidates will never have driven in foggy conditions before. Furthermore, fog can be patchy and unpredictable – I’ve lost count of the number of times I have been driving on the motorway during the winter and early-evening or early-morning fog banks start appearing, and you can be driving in totally clear conditions one moment, only to be unable to see more than a few car lengths ahead a second or two later. There is no way I would expect DVSA to risk either their examiners or the candidates’ wellbeing if such a risk exists, and I trust them to make the decision. I also don’t go around looking for evidence to contradict them.
Another ADI referred to a situation where it was obvious that a test was going to be cancelled, and yet he was forced to pick a pupil up in dangerous conditions since DVSA would not confirm that the test was off until 20 minutes before it was due to go out. If what he has said is correct, then he definitely has a point. His test centre should have been rather more sensible. We’re a bit more fortunate up this way – before now I’ve spoken with the test centre manager or an examiner and they’ve actually asked me if I’d like them to make an immediate decision rather than delay that decision (when conditions were very bad about three years ago). Based on my limited meteorological knowledge (yes, I admit it!), they tend to cancel whole mornings if things are bad, or up until a certain time if they think things might improve, and that really helps me when it comes to picking up pupils. Maybe a word with the test centre in question would be a more fruitful area to investigate for that commenter instead of just bad-mouthing them.
Will my test be cancelled due to bad weather?
I’ve answered this just about every year since I started the blog. YES. YOUR TEST CAN GET CANCELLED IF THE WEATHER IS BAD. If it IS cancelled, you will get another one free of charge.
Typical examples of ‘bad weather’ include:
- thick fog in any part of the test area
- falling snow with poor prognosis
- lying snow on roads
- ice
- extremely high winds
- flooding
In theory, ANY type of ‘bad weather’ could cause a cancellation, but they usually don’t. I’ve never had one cancelled due to wind or flooding, but I have the others.