Here is what happens on a driving test day. We're at Mirrarbooka licensing centre.
Test time 1 50 PM. The examiner is walking with the candidate towards the vehicle where he parked.
So the carpark is pretty packed, but most of the cars are stationary, so not many people are moving
through. When they get closer to the vehicle, the examiner will ask the candidate to sit in the car,
to turn the ignition on, which means that you have the lights on the dashboard, so you can operate
your indicators and the stop lights, which is what they check. Sometimes the examiner will check
your tyres as well, your seat belts, even the windows to check if they're rolling up and down.
Now the examiner is asking the candidate to indicate left and indicate right, and once he's
done that, he's going to check the rear indicators and the stop lights. We always recommend that
the candidate opens the window so they can hear what the examiner is asking them to do.
Once the checks are complete, the assessor will sit in the car, and most examiners explain
briefly what's going to take place, what are the sections like when are they going to ask them to
do certain things. Also, I want to mention that assessors do not trick candidates. For example,
they will not forget purposely to put the seat belt on, and if the candidate, the driver, doesn't
recognize a potential hazard, they fail them on the spot. We've never had that sort of experience
in the last 20-plus years. Don't forget to start the engine because sometimes, if a candidate is
really nervous, they would think that the engine was running, and they would attempt to move,
and as a result, the assessor will be forced to discontinue a driving test unless the candidate
rectifies the problem immediately. Don't forget to use indicators in the car park. You have to
indicate your intention. From the moment you start the engine on until the time you switch it off
at the end of the driving test when you park back here in the licensing centre,
every moment between switching your engine on and switching it off counts, and every single
action will contribute to scoring your points and to passing or failing your driving test.
In this instance, the candidate has gone past the first exit, and he's going towards the
second exit, where you can turn left or right. Mirrabooka Avenue can be pretty busy at any time
of the day or night, so at this time of the day, it is relatively busy, so you've got to keep your
eyes open, and you've got to be able to give way properly. The best rule and easiest to follow is
if there's the slightest doubt, do not proceed. If you're committed to turning halfway,
you've got to make sure that your entire vehicle fits inside of the little refuge lane, the spot
where you can wait for the traffic to clear before you proceed. If you can fit into the right lane if
there's no traffic and if you're not going to interfere with anyone, you can go to the right
lane. In this instance, the assessor asks him to turn right at the next traffic light, so staying
in the right lane is perfectly acceptable. So this is as far as we could follow him, but I'm going to
recreate what happened from here on and why this candidate did not pass his driving assessment.
It's always a good indication of whether you succeeded or not if your test doesn't go for
longer than half an hour. The candidate is back in the licensing centre car park
within about 15 to 16 minutes, which is never a good sign. Something must have happened that
prompted the assessor to discontinue the test. So let's see what happened. So I'm
going to have a chat with both candidate and the assessor and according to their feedback,
I'm going to recreate what happened so that way you can avoid failing your driving assessment.
So here is what happened. As you could see they proceeded through the car park
and they went past the the first exit on the left-hand side headed towards the second exit.
So here is a licensing centre on the right-hand side as you can see. So just passing the first exit,
we've got a few bumps here. At this stage of your driving assessment, you can expect that
your heart's going to beat a little bit harder. A lot of people report that they're nervous in the
first minutes of the driving test, whereas later on they get a little bit, you know, more relaxed.
But unfortunately, sometimes a little bit too relaxed and they don't recognize some important
aspects of the driving assessment, and as a result, they fail. So here, when we're exiting, we can simply
go into the refuge lane. There's no access from the left-hand side, which makes it a lot easier.
Now, the assessor asked him to turn right at the next street at the next traffic lights.
There was no problems with that so it was all smooth. By the way, this young bloke was
well prepared. He could drive really well. I could not believe that he failed. He would hardly make
any errors apart from maybe some parking errors mainly in path and flow. So he's kept going that
was all good, no problems whatsoever the assess, you know, according to the assessor's comments, um
there was nothing that he could pick, you know, his drive, general driving was pretty good. They
turned left at the first roundabout here. It was all smooth, no problems whatsoever.
So as they proceeded there was not much of a, you know, conversation exchanged, it was pretty quiet
and you could expect when you when you do relatively well that you might get relaxed
a little bit more and, you know, start to sort of think a little bit more clearly.
The downside of being too relaxed is you might let some important things slip your mind. Often
times people tell us that they were thinking about parking before they even got there, or
thinking about the exercise left something behind while performing some other maneuvers.
Do one thing at the time and you will not have problems with focus. So this is really an easy
driving test route. Heading down towards Northwood Drive, there's shops on the right-hand side, so they
were not going to do the exercise stopping for shopping just yet, so generally this assessor goes
through the exercise left something behind first and then, you know, towards the end of the test they do
the stopping for shopping. Another roundabout, all good and smooth, there was no problems whatsoever
with uh, you know, indicating and observing and anticipating the traffic prior to getting
to the roundabout. It was all good, so he scored pretty, you know, pretty much every point for that.
Now, they turn here on Northwood Drive okay, which is a 60 zone
and initially, there are two lanes, but at some point, it's going to be merging into one. Keep an
eye on everything when you have to give way. If you have a slightest doubt, do not proceed. Doubt
takes a couple of seconds which is a valuable amount of time for you to make a decision. So
if you wasted those couple of seconds, it's best to wait for the next best opportunity. So shortly
we're going to have merging traffic from here you can see the sign, so yeah, there's merging
traffic up there. We're indicating, checking blind spot and we merge. Make sure you don't deviate
too much when you're merging because the road becomes more and more narrow.
So still 60 zone on Northwood Drive, so that's the bridge over the Reid Highway
and we've got a tiny roundabout which is pretty sharp we've got a little slow
point before the roundabout and then the narrow roundabout, okay. We're going straight through here,
indicating left on time so it was all pretty smooth here. Now, around here to the best of my
knowledge, the candidate got a speed warning so apparently, he was doing about 65 in a 60 zone
which is not an immediate fail. They will not fail you if it's within the five kilometres above the
speed limit because most cars are built to show a slightly higher speed than the true speed. They
kept driving down towards Boyare Avenue and they turned left at the next roundabout. So as you get
off Northwood Drive to Boyare Avenue, the speed changes to 50 kilometres an hour. Shortly after,
the candidate drove about 55 again, so he got a second speed warning, which was not a fail
again. Now, as they approached the Mirrabooka Avenue intersection, the assessor asked him to turn right.
There's obviously a stop sign and also you have to give way to both the left and right hand side.
This is the intersection where this young bloke failed. The candidate committed to turning before
everyone proceeded. There was a car approximately at a distance of about 30 to 40 meters, approaching
from the left-hand side, which he should have waited for because if someone's approaching at say
40-50 kilometres an hour to turn, and you are doing zero kilometres an hour that's a huge difference
in speed. So what happened next? The assessor jumped onto the dual brakes, he had to brake to intervene,
to to avoid a potentially dangerous situation and then they made a u-turn and came back to the
licensing centre. When I asked the student why did he do such an error, he said that he assumed that
he already failed for speeding, which wasn't the case. Do not make any assumptions what happened
even if you've got speed warnings it doesn't mean that you failed so obviously that affected him and
he kind of, you know, just wanted to finish it. He believed that he could beat the car that was
coming on the left-hand side, but according to the assessor who's very experienced and, you know, very
kind assessor says that, you know, there would be no way that, you know, for him to proceed safely
before that car interferes with his path. As always, feel free to ask any questions
in the comments section below. Thanks for watching and I'll catch you next time!