Future offers hope for a better link between testing and real driving

At a recent meeting I attended I was surprised to hear one of the speaker’s state that driver testing was flawed because the new drivers who pass the driving test in the shortest time, have the fewest lessons, incur the fewest driving faults on test, have the highest pass rate are the group of drivers who are involved in the most collisions?  The speaker also suggested that the driving test would be much better if it was competence-based rather than fault-based, and they were not too impressed with the current driving test trial, either.

I have heard this assertion before – that those who are most successful at passing the driving test are the most likely to have crashes. I do not believe it is as simple as that. Equally, I also understand the call from many for a competence-based test that may be a more positive experience for candidates. I have always been a bit sceptical about how this might, if at all, affect the driving test pass rate.

I raised this with DVSA and the Head of Transport Psychology at TRL, Dr Shaun Helman. Kindly responded as follows:

TRL report 652: “Novice driver safety and the British practical driving test” shows (among other things) that once exposure and age are controlled, people with more driving faults on test have more accidents. This is not to say that the test is perfect at predicting who will have accidents – how could it be, with all the things that influence accident likelihood? Nonetheless, there is a relationship.

Published Project Report (PPR 427): “The accident history and behaviours of new drivers who pass their first practical driving test” shows (from Cohort II data) that first time passers of the practical test have around 10-15% fewer collisions once age, experience and exposure is controlled.

There are complications/caveats to both of these:

1. The ‘less safe per mile’ drivers (ones with fewer faults in TRL652, and ones who take more attempts to pass in PPR427) seem to do less driving. As ever, there is a balance between mobility and safety that needs to be struck, and this could be seen as some kind of self-regulation.
2. Remember, it is not necessarily that the test MAKES people like this – the effects are just as likely to be due to existing differences between people.
3. The data sets are quite old.

Nonetheless, this data seems to show that the test we have/had (these are both pre-independent driving) is to some degree valid.

Of course, we also have what might be called a competence-based system in the theory test (HP especially) – there are also links (not perfect, but links) between performance on this measure and accidents.

I suspect it matters not how you measure competence/faults, but instead how well you match the test content to what is required for safe outcomes.

Which is, of course, what the DVSA is trying to do in the current driving test trial.

I do wonder if the DVSA and organisations like MSA GB were not direct enough in trying to explain the proposed changes to the new driving test and its relevance to modern driving, and did not spell out the overriding aim of the whole project. How about this for a quick summation: Longer routes, higher risk roads, less searching round back streets for suitable places to do existing manoeuvres, etc.

Is the driving test valid? I think so. Will the proposed changes make a real difference to new driver safety? Yes, I think so. Competence or fault-based testing – would a change make a difference? I’m not sure; perhaps we can consider that more carefully once we have introduced the current proposed changes.