Did you get it?
Woohoo you're a beauty!
Ah life on the open road.
The independence.
The liberty.
Are you loving all the freedom?
Yeah well mum wants me to go
get dog food.
Nevertheless doing errands under her own
steam is a freedom Rosie appreciates after missing the
mark the first time she sat her restricted license.
What
happened?
What did you do wrong?
The first time I hit the
curb when doing the reverse parallel park.
You must be
pretty gutted.
I'm kind of embarrassed.
There's no need
to feel that way because Rosie's not alone.
Pretty much everyone
has been failing the first time.
In fact the AA estimates more
than 40% of new drivers under the age of 18 fail their
restricted test the first time they sit it and our
comprehensive TikTok poll backs that up.
It's deeply
disappointing for the teenager, not to mention whoever's paying
for it because getting your license isn't cheap.
Back in
1988 when I set my practical test it was
considerably cheaper even when you double it because yes I too
failed it the first time.
But now in 2022 it costs almost
$135.
A big chunk of that fee covers just the application to
sit it.
The practical driving test makes up the rest.
And I
remember both 1988 and my test vividly.
And when you've like used all
your savings from your paper round to like pay for the test
and like all your friends at school like know you're going to
sit it like totally mega stressful.
Right, so how can we
give our teens the best shot at passing the first time?
Harald
Leeuwenburgh has some ideas.
I've been a driving instructor for to think
about it 20 years.
I've helped a lot of people probably I'd say
thousands over the years.
So Harald's agreed to give us his
top tips to get licensed.
So top three things that people do
wrong I would say first of all is the the preparation the car
itself.
So no Warrant of Fitness, no registration, no license, and
no break lights, turning up late for the test.
From there, it's
it's things like not indicating or not indicating at the right
places, exceeding the speed limit and especially around
temporary speed zones and not fully stopping at the stop
sign.
We'll deal with those basic mistakes in just a moment
but first, the test itself.
A practical driving test is
divided into two parts.
First part is a more basic part so
the first part is several intersections, some lane changes,
usually a parallel park or a 3-point turn.
That first bit
lasts between 10 and 15 minutes.
Second part will be high speed
driving, more complex difficult intersections, busier situations
so yeah just really more complex really.
During your test
you're allowed to make two critical errors; 1 in each part
of the test.
Critical errors are things like not indicating
or not indicating at the right places.
Um exceeding the speed
limit by five kilometers.
So the sort of more minor things
like blind spot checking, not doing a proper head check.
But
there are some errors that mean instant failure.
An instant
fail would be things like not stopping at a stop sign,
exceeding the speed by more than 10 kilometers, running a
red light, failing to give way, those sort of things would be
an instant fail.
So let's go back to what Harold says are
the most commonly made errors and clear them up.
First up:
indicating.
As a rule of thumb if if other people benefit from
us indicating do it.
And that includes indicating when
leaving a roundabout.
A lot of people when they go straight
through a roundabout which we often say the second exit they
may not indicate left as they come off because they say I'm
going straight.
And yes it might seem obvious but watch your
speed.
Do you know what the speed limit here is Caro?
Um
well I assume it's still fifty is it?
This is seventy.
This is
seventy?
Yes.
I'm going forty.
Then there's the full stop.
Was
that a stop sign?
That was a stop sign yeah.
Did you did you
stop?
I did stop.
You didn't fully stop so you did what we
call a rolling stop.
Stopping at a stop sign means all four
wheels need to stop rolling so we need to come to complete
stop.
And for all those teens who don't nail it the first
time there is some consolation, Harald reckons most of their
fully licensed parents wouldn't do any better.
Fail definitely
they would fail definitely.
And so so far you've got you've
got three critical errors and an immediate failure.
It's like
1988 all over again.
So if you're driving with your
parents, you may not always see a good example.
But that's all
in the rear view mirror now.
Rosie's on her way.
Freedom,
liberty, and independence await.
Can I actually just grab
a quick lift?
That would be really great.
I'm running kind of
a little bit late for... oh tidy car.
Hey, Rosie where do you
keep your CDs in here?