Are You Ready For Your Driving Test?
How do you, as a provisional licence holder, know when you are ready to take the driving test and have a good chance of passing first time?
If you are taking professional lessons with a driving instructor, who you trust because you took the time to choose the right individual and did not just go for the cheapest school in your area, then they should help you realise for your self when you are ready.
Personally we don’t wait for the learner driver to get to the test standard before we advise them to book a driving test, we go by the rate of learning, number of lessons taken and we can predict a rough time to achieve the DVSA standard. This usually means that we can tell them a recommended date about 6-8 weeks in advance. If a couple of weeks before the test date there are major driving faults that need to be addressed, we could either work on them, take additional lessons or move the test date.
The main question though is are you truly independent, or do you rely on help from your supervising driver even if it is only a prompt through asking a question? You will be surprised at how easy it is to commit a driving error when your driving instructor suddenly goes silent on you and doesn't answer a question that you ask them, or comment on how you are doing. A lot of times during a lesson, we might tell candidates to drive home or make their way to a familiar place and all of a sudden their driving habit changes (approaching junctions becomes too fast, forget to check mirrors, do not use appropriate gears, fail to observe speed limits, etc), all because they have not become independent and have been relying on prompts.
During your driving test, you only have 38-40 minutes to demonstrate to the DVSA Test Examiner that you have both the knowledge and skills that are required to drive safely unsupervised. So it is absolutely important that you get enough practice and experience dealing with the various traffic situations that might be encountered, after all it only takes 1 serious fault to fail in a split second.
Many test candidates know they have not reached the required DVSA test standard, but insist they are ready either because they want to save money on lessons, or have left learning late and now urgently require a licence for work or the 2 year theory test certificate is expiring soon. if you take the test before you are ready, you are most likely to fail.
Many of our learner drivers pass their test first time, not just because we have good instructors, but because they put in the work required and follow the help and advice we give them. So we ask you again, are you ready to take the UK driving test?
If you require high quality affordable driving lessons from very helpful, patient honest and fully qualified instructor, then why not call us or fill out your details on our ‘Contact Us’ page.
Also if you are thinking about becoming an instructor? Visit our ADI Training Page.
If you fail, it's important you continue with the training so you'll keep up to standard. In our experience, if you stop your training before taking another test this is false economy. Many people often fail through lack of continuity of their training. Even an hour a week is better than none at all. The DVSA's national pass rate figure is 47%. The DVSA suggest a minimum of 42 hours plus 20 hours of private practice, before taking a driving test to give you a good chance of passing.
