More people fail the car driving test because of:
- Not making effective observations at junctions.
What does this mean and what are effective observations? Here is the driving test examiner explanation.
You must:
- make effective observations before moving into a new road
- make sure it is safe before proceeding
Any mistakes in this area are marked under the category ‘junctions’ – Observations’ fault on your driving test result.
Pass your driving test by learning more about driving test preparation.
What are effective observations?
Here is a short video showing how to emerge from a junction
Video Master Class Notes
The video demonstrates emerging from two different types of a road junction. What the video cannot show however is when to move out of the junction. That will have to be practised in your driving lessons with advice from your instructor.
On your lesson and whilst waiting to emerge from a side road into the main road (usually, but not always it would be a left turn for your first junction). Your instructor will show you when to emerge without causing oncoming traffic to change speed or direction.
This though could go very wrong if your operation of the foot pedals is not efficient enough to cause your car to move out. You might stall, accelerate too hard, swing wide, or emerge slowly causing the vehicle on the main road to brake or overtake. You may think that your instructor had got it wrong, but of course, it would be your skillset that needed to be improved.
Emerging Junctions Advice for First Driving Lessons
To reduce the possibility of causing the event written in the previous paragraph to happen here are a few tips.
- Emerge out of your first junction with either no oncoming traffic, or if there is, make sure it is some distance away. I ask my students when they have a problem judging the speed of traffic to imagine walking across the road. Could they cross the road without running?
- Make sure. that you have the car in the getready to move position before you even think about entering the junction. This then means you only need to think of one thought.”Is it safe to move out?” Because your feet are already correctly poised to make your car drive.
- If your feet are poised and the car is in a ready to move condition you can always (in later lessons) get the car in a slightly unready to move state if the road becomes busy and you have to wait longer than expected.
The driving test pass rate between April 2019 and March 2020 was
45.9%
PASS
To pass a car driving test you will need to demonstrate to the driving examiner that you are not a potential danger to other road users.
This will mean you obey all road signs and control the car you are driving in a safe manner. Including the use of your driving mirrors and understanding the blind spots in a car and how to overcome them. From the statistics, 54.1% of learner drivers who failed you can see a lot more understanding of what is safe driving needs to be carried out
54.1%
FAIL
Top Ten Reasons for Failing a Driving Test
The DVSA has published a list of the top ten reasons for failing a driving test which you can view here. As part of our Master Class series of posts, we will publish articles to help with your understanding of what the driving examiner is looking for.