Driving test day: what happens, minute by minute

The driving test is about 40 minutes of driving, but the appointment is nearer an hour, and most of the avoidable failures happen in the first ten minutes. This is the day in order.

Before you leave

You need your photocard provisional licence. Not a photo of it, not the paper counterpart, the card. Without it the test does not go ahead and the fee is lost. If you have lost it, DVLA's replacement takes weeks; do not book a test until it has arrived.

The car must be taxed, insured for you to drive on a test, have an MOT if it needs one, and carry L plates front and back. The examiner will check the tyres, the lights and that the passenger seat has a working head restraint. An instructor's car has all of this. If you are using your own car, check the DVSA rules for cars that are not allowed; some models with certain features are excluded.

Arriving

Aim for ten minutes early. Later than that and the examiner may treat you as a no-show; earlier and you sit in a waiting room getting nervous. Most centres have a small car park for candidates; your instructor will park facing out so the move-off is simple. Where the centre is in a shared building, ask on the learner reports page which entrance to use. Enfield and Hornchurch, for example, both have doors that new candidates walk past.

Your instructor can come out with you on the test and sit in the back, or wait at the centre. Most candidates prefer not to have them there. Either way they can listen to the debrief at the end.

The first five minutes

The examiner calls your name, checks your licence, asks you to sign a declaration that the car is insured, and takes you to the car. On the way you read a number plate from 20 metres. Then, before you drive, one "tell me" question: how would you check something, answered in words. The "show me" question comes later, while driving: demonstrate something like washing the windscreen. There are only 21 of them in total, and all the show me tell me questions are on one page with the answers.

Getting the safety questions wrong is a minor fault, one each. Nobody fails on them. But answering confidently settles you, so learn the list.

The drive

About 40 minutes, of which roughly 20 are "independent driving": following a sat nav the examiner sets up, or following road signs. Getting lost on the independent section is not a fault; how you react to it is. If you go the wrong way, drive it well and the examiner will bring you back to the route.

You will do one manoeuvre from a set of four: parallel park, bay park (forwards or reverse), or pull up on the right and reverse two car lengths. You may also be asked for an emergency stop; about one candidate in three is.

Faults are marked as they happen. A driving fault (minor) is a mistake with no consequence. Sixteen of them is a fail. A serious fault is a mistake that could have led to an incident; one is a fail. A dangerous fault is one where the examiner had to act or an incident occurred; that ends the test in most cases.

You will not know how you are doing. Examiners write during the test and their expression tells you nothing. Candidates regularly pass believing they failed at a roundabout ten minutes in.

The result

Back at the centre, still in the car, the examiner tells you the result and reads back the faults. If you passed, you hand over your provisional licence and DVSA sends the full one within three weeks; you can drive immediately. If you failed, you can book another test straight away, for a date at least ten working days later.

What actually goes wrong

Across the learner reports on this site, the things that sink people before the drive starts are the same everywhere: forgotten licence, a car with a warning light on, a tyre the examiner will not accept, and arriving late after parking in the wrong place. All of them are fixable the night before.