Passed my driving test, nearly forty years after passing my driving test - Would you?

Yes I would considering I only passed 6 months ago in London. 1 minor on practical and 50/50 on theory.
The failure rate is high in London TCs too.. Around 30%+ first time pass rate.
 
I did the IAM Advanced Driver course in 2018 - was very good for learning some new techniques and also getting rid of a few bad habits picked up over the years.

The test is with a current or retired traffic plod - pleased to say I passed first time.
 
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platinum87 said:
The issue for me is the hazard perception test.
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I'd never even heard of that until you posted. I've just found some online and I did one without really understanding what I was doing. I saw a hazard and clicked, then waited as I expected more to appear. I got one point.
So I did some more and when I saw something potentially about to happen, clicked half a dozen times and got five points. Did a few more and did the same thing and got five points on each one. Once you understand what you're supposed to do, they're not exactly tricky.
 
Rroff said:
A little bit of a contentious one for me having people as passengers sometimes who are driving instructors - from years of gaming and other similar stuff I can be aware of what is going on in my mirrors sometimes without telegraphing it as obviously as many people - occasionally getting well meaning observations about it :s
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Got told by my instructor that I must turn my head to look t mirrors so they know. I bit silly, but I guess no tiger way really.
 
mrk said:
I'm the type of driver that is always conscious/critical of my own driving habits so if I make a mistake I know it was a mistake and make a mental note to avoid in future and call myself out on it. This has become a practice as the years have gone by, more especially since having this car as it's all too easy to take advantage of the performance and normalise bad habits.

I think I would pass fairly easily and not break a sweat as a result.

I do wonder how some people I see on teh roads managed to pass however...
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I think that just reflects you as the fastidious person you are though!
 
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Feek said:
I'd never even heard of that until you posted. I've just found some online and I did one without really understanding what I was doing. I saw a hazard and clicked, then waited as I expected more to appear. I got one point.
So I did some more and when I saw something potentially about to happen, clicked half a dozen times and got five points. Did a few more and did the same thing and got five points on each one. Once you understand what you're supposed to do, they're not exactly tricky.
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Yea so in the example i gave, i have seen the hazard 10 seconds before, once the van popped out, it is no longer a hazard, its too late now.

But this was a test, i have no clue the scoring and what i did right or wrong, i am just guessing. However i do not expect anyone to have clicked when i did, as the gaps in the bushes were small.

You are only suppose to click once per hazard, or that is what i was told, so if you are clicking half a dozen times in how long?? I was told this would result in a fail.

So i saw a bridge coming up, you cant see beyond the bridge etc, so i waited until i was 3-5 seconds from the bridge and clicked, im trying to time it, but in reality i could have clicked 30 seconds before, the guy is driving slowly and visibility is good

Next i enter into a town center with a hundred people around, many hazards, am i suppose to rapid click?

Its not tricky, its stupid
 
I believe more than half of drivers on the road would fail a current UK driving test. Yes they are not quite as tricky as when we had to do additional manoeuvres and what not, but if you look at driving test fails on youtube, they are very strict and you can fail by just being unlucky sometimes.

I saw one where someone went through a 50 sign that came up on a dual carriageway that they had zero chance of seeing as they were going around a slight bend and lorries were blocking the signage. I saw one where a women pulled over for an ambulance and got an insta fail because she crossed over the white line of a cycle lane (with no cyclists in the cycle lain behind or in front). She was apparently meant to carry on until it was safe to stop, despite that she may not have known how long the cycle lane went on for. I saw one where a student got confused by the sat nav, and because the examiner corrected them on where to go, they cancelled their indicator by which time a car had already pulled out reacting to their earlier signal, and they got a fail for misleading another road user. There's a lot of things that can go wrong and I do feel for some of the 17 year olds doing it today as it is nerve wracking for them, and you can just get a hard route with some nasty situations.

I feel driving standards have truly gone down a lot over the last decade. Maybe due to the lack of police presence people have an increased confidence they will get away with things. Not sure.
 
platinum87 said:
You are only suppose to click once per hazard, or that is what i was told, so if you are clicking half a dozen times in how long?? I was told this would result in a fail.
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That doesn't seem to be the case with the sample tests I did. In each of them, there's one hazard per test and when you've completed it and take the option to show the result, you're expected to click when you first see it and then click another four times while the hazard is building. It doesn't actually seem to matter if you click about ten times once you see the hazard coming. As long as you click five times during the period when they expect you to click five times, you'll get five points.

That's the impression I got anyway. Perhaps someone who knows for sure can comment.
 
I've recently taken the motorbike theory test, and that has the hazard perception part included. The idea is to click when you see a "developing hazard", not just a potential hazard. The earlier you spot the developing hazard the more points you score. You can score anywhere from 5 points to 0 points depending on when your first click in the hazard time window is registered. Additional clicks will not give you additional score, but won't be counted against you, unless you just spam-click lol

Example would be a pedestrian is walking at the side of the road. As an experienced driver, I would register that as a hazard, which it is, but only a "potential hazard". On the clip the walker then takes a backward glance. Immediately clicking then will get you 5 points, as it's now a "developing hazard", as they are probably about to cross. A split second later on the clip, they start crossing - depending on when you now click you can score 4, 3, 2, 1 or 0 points depending on how long you take to react. Not clicking at all will get you a big fat zero!

This is one of the reason people who have been driving for a while take a little while to get used to. I did some mock type tests and found I was clicking too early, so I adopted the three click method, whereby you click once when you think you've recognised the hazard, then twice more between .5-.75 seconds later. The test is designed for new drivers, experienced drivers spot the hazards earlier (whilst it's still a potential hazard according to the DVSA) and tend to click too early. There are 14 clips, each has one hazard, one will have two hazards
 
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If you drive regularly and in a professional manner passing it again shouldn't be difficult for most people specially those who drive larger vehicles.

What baffles me though is that loads of people are taking their tests in automatics and electric cars.

An automatic is understandable as many cars are trending towards that, but EV? As if they will be able to afford one as their first car.

Fiesta 125 is all you need for a first car :)
 
happy_2008 said:
and also inability to read a roundabout
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To be honest I have no natural mental process to read a roundabout and have no idea what mental approach people take to them (sure I know all the theory on paper). Obviously your run of the mill 3 roads, 1-2 lane ones are pretty easy but I will literally go out of my way to avoid complex ones - despite driving for over 20 years, many many thousands of miles and being comfortable with all kinds of complex road layouts. I feel like it is one of those things I'm missing some kind of step by step approach which if I could see through the eyes of someone else it would all click into place in an instance.
 
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Yes, I'm pretty confident that I'd pass. However, I think the dumbing down of the test by removal of basic manoeuvres (no 3-point turn?!) is a mistake as is the introduction of the "follow the sat nav" segments.

On a motorcycle test you'd be asked to "Follow the directions for Coventry" and be expected to get in the correct lane, signal etc... having a TomTom telling you where to go and which lane to be in seems like a backward step and an over-reliance on technology imo.

Echoing the above statements... I'd much appreciate more focus on lane discipline and reading the road, even going one step ahead and splitting the licence in to two parts and including motorway driving as an assessed module. The amount of people I see sitting in lane 2 or approaching the back of a large vehicle, slow down 10-20mph then pull put at 54mph because they aren't capable of looking in their mirrors is quite sad.
 
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Black Noir said:
Yes, I'm pretty confident that I'd pass. However, I think the dumbing down of the test by removal of basic manoeuvres (no 3-point turn?!) is a mistake as is the introduction of the "follow the sat nav" segments.

On a motorcycle test you'd be asked to "Follow the directions for Coventry" and be expected to get in the correct lane, signal etc... having a TomTom telling you where to go and which lane to be in seems like a backward step and an over-reliance on technology imo.

Echoing the above statements... I'd much appreciate more focus on lane discipline and reading the road, even going one step ahead and splitting the licence in to two parts and including motorway driving as an assessed module. The amount of people I see sitting in lane 2 or approaching the back of a large vehicle, slow down 10-20mph then pull put at 54mph because they aren't capable of looking in their mirrors is quite sad.
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The 3 point turn wasnt hard anyway so its hardly dumbing down. The test is longer now, 40 mins but mine lasted 50 mins.

Follow roads signs and directions is still there I think 1 in 4 tests are conducted that way. So you have to learn it.
The Tom Tom is basic it doesn't tell you which lane to go its just a route you have to follow.
 
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