Tips for Passing Your Driving Test First Time

Learning to drive can be a stressful process. A lot depends on getting your driving license. For younger people, it means freedom and independence. For others it can be the make-or-break factor when it comes to getting a new job or moving into a new phase of their life. For some people passing on their first attempt is vitally important – learning to drive is an expensive business, with the average student needing more than 40 hours of lessons before they’re ready to take the test. It isn’t feasible for some people to keep trying to pass. Also, national statistics for 2010 indicate that people who have failed on their first attempt may be less likely to pass the more times they sit the test. If you want to be in the 47% who pass first time, here are three tips which you might find useful.

Stay calm! It’s difficult to remain calm when you’re sitting your driving test. If you’re someone who usually has issues with stage fright or other anxiety, spend some time coming up to your test thinking about ways of combating your nerves on the big day. Breathing exercises can be very useful. Remember that the driving test examiner will have seen countless nervous learners before you, so there’s nothing to be embarrassed about.

Work on your manoeuvres: While you might have nightmares about crashing into other cars while road driving, you shouldn’t forget the importance of the standard manoeuvres – turn in the road, reversing around a corner, parallel/reverse parking and bay parking – one of which you’ll be expected to perform on your test. This is when your examiner while be looking for you to display control over the vehicle and good spatial awareness, so make sure you’re confident with all manoeuvres before sitting the test; you can guarantee that if there’s one you’re a little iffy on, that’s the one which you’ll be expected to perform.

Get to know the car. It’s likely that you’ll be sitting your test in your instructor’s car. If this is the vehicle you’ve had lessons in, you’ll probably be reasonably familiar with it, but take them time to understand all the controls properly. Your examiner isn’t going to test your ability to switch the air-conditioning on and off, but if it suddenly starts to rain you’ll want to know how to activate the windscreen wipers before visibility becomes a major problem.