Unsuccessful - post here

You know I would love it if they allow the tests to be recorded or have your instructor sit in the test with you. This way you know exactly the mistakes that were made and so does your instructor and you can work on correcting them. Wonder what the pass rates will be then.

I asked my driving instructor why they can't sit in the test and he said the testers didn't agree to this proposal. Apparently it was wholeheartedly opposed by all testers. Not easy to fail someone when you have another witness. Total money making scam !

There was a pilot scheme and the uptake was poor so it didn’t go ahead[/quote]

Obviously, it's easy to fail someone. Not easy if you have to give valid reasons. Any idea when the pilot was run ?

I failed my test twice since December. Especially after having seen the results of my second test, I can't help feeling quite cynical of the whole thing.

I was heartbroken the first time, but wholeheartedly accept that it was a deserved fail. Despite going out of my way to achieve an average of 3 hours of driving practice a week for the month prior, and improving massively in all imaginable areas (reflected in feedback from instructors and main sponsors), I was wracked with nerves when the test arrived and drove appallingly; I was ashamed at how poor my driving was - constant coasting, forgetting more often than not to check mirrors and blind spot, misuse of gears and all the usual rest.

However what doesn't add up is that very little of what I just described is reflected in my marking sheet for that first test - no Grade 1's, 8 Grade 2's and 2 Grade 3's. It turns out that had it not been for the Grade 3's at traffic lights and making one less Grade 2 mistake, I'd have passed. It wouldn't have been a deserved pass by any stretch.

For my second test, I took several pretests with my instructor (the test day included). He was very pleased with everything, and commented that I was far beyond the minimum passing standard. He did advise at first that I was coasting a little, but we had mostly resolved that issue by the end of the pretest. Because of the traffic that day, I might have fell temporarily back into the habit of coasting as I had rarely driven before in traffic this heavy.

This time, I was able to suppress the nerves, drove calmly, smoothly and went above and beyond the call of duty on observation throughout the whole test. Everything got off to an excellent start I felt. What threw me off at times was the extremely heavy traffic everywhere that evening which was often conflicting with the directions I was being given by the tester. Such as on the Mayberry Road - Belgard Road junction, I could see that traffic was piling onto the yellow box in the junction. When I could finally go, I opted for the right lane, as the left lane was still completely occupied with traffic back to the yellow box. Everything was a constant judgment call in this traffic, and I felt I did the right thing. It had the knock-on effect though of leaving me unable to maneuver into the left lane easily when I had to turn left past the Aldi. That was the only main error that I picked up on during the test.

In the end, I was failed with 9 Grade 1's, 12 Grade 2's and no Grade 3's. I was shocked to be given so many Grade 2's for positioning and progress alone e.g. from traffic lights. Misleading traffic was another one, although I felt the tester should have borne their fair share of the blame on that one for being indecisive and ordering me to abort turns at the last moment which caused me to leave my indicator on momentarily as I suddenly had to alter my concentration away from the intended turn and get back to my original position, which isn't the easiest of things in this kind of traffic. Feedback at the end was very lacking.

I just couldn't understand that having drove to a much worse standard in the previous test (at least from my own point of view) how I could have gotten much worse marks overall in my second attempt than in my first. I've never before seen that kind of marking inconsistency. I understand the restrictions on time that testers are under, but the feedback needs major improvement. Instead of being just handed an ambiguous marking sheet dotted with numbers and shown the door, I really feel that proper written explanations of errors, exact locations of where the candidate went wrong and given the length of time it takes for another test to come up, unlucky candidates deserve to be provided with real and constructive feedback.

Ahhh just failed and the reason why I failed was something I never knew was wrong or expected to be an issue (tester said I should have gone up to 4th more)
Got 7 grade 2's for that alone while I only got 4 overall elsewhere.

Totally gutted and annoyed. Annoyed me more when he said that I'm a good driver I just didn't show it today, not sure how he'd know then since he has only just met me :P

Good thing to take away though was the fact I did really well over all, and certain areas I was worried about like reversing around the corner went really smoothly.

Straight onto the cancellation list so!