Nasty Examiners

I have been a driving test examiner. It was for just 16 months before  I made the move into instructing. I didn’t leave because I didn’t enjoy the role, my personal circumstances changed prompting the need for a more flexible working week. The training undertaken to become an examiner is intense. There is a lot to learn and it may seem easy to look at examiners and say that they just mark boxes, but it really isn’t that simple. The marking system is complex and requires a thought process for pretty much every mark that goes on the sheet (ipads these days). If an examiner marks a fault, it has to be justifiable. Let’s get a couple of things out the way. There are no quotas. There are no longer Major and Minors. There are no tricks to failing candidates. It’s all a nonsense. Majors and Minors were rebranded years ago as Dangerous, Serious and Driving Faults. You can pass with 15 driving faults but not with a single Serious or Dangerous. Examiners have to apply a decision making process to each mark and justify how they reached that mark. Some things are Serious straight away and there is no option to record a driving fault instead. An example of this would be Going straight ahead at a junction when the lane the car is in has road markings to turn left. That is marked straight away as a Serious fault within Road Markings. It is non negotiable. It could go up a notch if danger was caused by going straight ahead but even if there was no other traffic within 100 miles, the driver went against the directions of the road markings. It’s a Serious fault and therefore a test fail. The examiner has no leeway on this. There isn’t any forgiveness for a simple or silly error. It’s how the Government have set the test standard and that’s it.

The examiner is not nasty, they just mark according to how a candidate drives. Every candidate starts a test with a clean sheet. What happens during the drive depends on how the faults are recorded and a result is provided with a debrief at the end of the test. The examiner doesn’t know you. In reality, an hour after your test, they probably won’t recall your name or your face if asked. It’s not disrespectful, it’s just how it is. Examiners conduct around 35 tests a week every week and see 35 different people a week every week. Every so often a returning candidate will get the same examiner, but even then, an examiner won’t necessarily remember them. An examiner has nothing to gain by passing or failing anyone. There is no incentive, no behind locked doors chit chat or lottery. All of those rumours come from aggrieved candidates who have failed. Read the reviews on Google about Test centres. There are more positive reviews than negative about individual examiners. I have had a couple of complaints made about me. One was that I wouldn’t take a customer out on test because an indicator wasn’t working. He called me inexperienced, lazy and not interested in my job. His indicator wasn’t working and that’s that. I would rather have been out conducting his test than sitting in the office waiting for the clock to tick around to the next test. There is nothing gained by not taking a candidate out on test. It is really important to note that the DVSA is really very customer centric and puts a lot of effort into ensuring that examiners are of the correct mettle. The days of the suited 50 year old white male with a clipboard and an introduction where the candidate must call them “sir” is long gone, dead and buried. I am however, in my 50’s own a few suits, I have a clipboard but I have never been knighted by King or Queen. I can’t be. I’m Irish and proud of it. No need to call me sir, in fact i actively discourage it. The examiner workforce is diverse and all the examiners i have met are cheery happy sociable people with a job to do. It may not occur to you that every single test is risky. Examiners are getting into a car with someone they have never met and have no idea of how good or bad a driver they are and putting their lives ultimately in the hands and feet of a complete stranger, yet they do not convey this. Their concentration levels are so high throughout the test that you would not believe how much they have to process dynamically to ensure that not only they are safe but you as a candidate and other road users ares safe throughout the test. It can be mentally draining but they turn up day in and day out and conduct tests that you should be ready and able to pass. Examiners are not nasty people. They are chatty if you want to chat and they are excellent at spotting whether you will be a talker or not very early on. They will put you at ease when they can and if you mess it up on your test, they will explain why. They don’t make stuff up. What would be the point ? Do you really think that by failing you when you should have passed is worth losing their job over ? On the other hand, there are candidates who scrape through their tests with 15 driving faults. They are deemed as safe and competent and are handed a pass certificate. My personal view is that 15 is far too high, but it’s not my standard, it is the DVSA standard and that is what all examiners mark to. As for certain test centres being harder to pass at than others, it really isn’t true. Statistics can show anything you want. If a certain test centre has a pass rate of 50%, then there is no reason the other 50% cannot pass. Being prepared for a test is the key. It’s as simple as that.