Driving Faults To Eradicate Before Your Practical Driving Test

As you progress with your driving lessons you may start to wonder what it takes to get practical test ready. Your driving instructor will be keeping a close eye on your progress, but it helps to understand where you need to be before you can consider taking the test.

Here we look at the ten common driving faults that learners need to eradicate before they can move forward with booking their tests.

Inappropriate Speeds

While it is likely that you are doing a good job at staying within the speed limit, especially with your driving instructor keeping track, you also need to understand that driving too slow is also an issue. Going 20mph in a 30mph area is just as likely to lead to a failure as 35mph would, unless there is a good reason.

Poor Signalling

You need to understand how and when to use your signals so others on the road understand what you are doing. Failing to signal, doing it too early or too late or not knowing when it is appropriate could all be grounds for failure.

Poor Steering Control

You need to be in control of the vehicle at all times, which means your steering needs to be up to snuff. Keep your hands in the correct position and don’t allow your grip to loosen from the wheel, especially when returning it to its position after a turn. You also need to be able to keep your car within the road lines and avoid obvious issues, like hitting curbs.

Bad Positioning

You need to show that you are capable of thinking ahead while on the road, which means getting your positioning right. Getting into the correct lane early is important, as is maintaining the right distances from the centre of the road and the curb when driving.

Moving Away

Moving away should be second nature to you by the time you take your practical driving test, but some become so comfortable with it that they forget to apply what they have learned. Make sure you conduct all of your observations and don’t forget about your blind spot.

Approaching Junctions

Often seen as the biggest cause for failed driving tests, poor observation at junctions can cause danger for you and other road users. You need to be able to exercise good judgement in your driving, which means stopping when appropriate, observing what is happening and only pulling out into a junction when it is safe. You also need to watch for things like stopping the vehicle too early, which limits your viewable area, and too late, which pokes the nose of the car out into the road.

The Manoeuvres

While the basic driving techniques need to be demonstrated throughout the practical driving test, you will only be tested on one of the four set manoeuvres in the driving test. You need to be equally proficient with all of them, as you won’t know which one has been chosen until you are taking the test. It can be extremely frustrating to get everything else right, only to fail on a manoeuvre that you didn’t spend long enough practicing.