Driving Test and Independent Driving

Independent driving - where the candidate is not following the directions given at each stage by the instructor but rather following a route, e.g. following road signs to Town X until the instructor tells them - is going to form part of the driving test from October 2010 in Great Britain.

The candidate will be required to drive for around 10 minutes, and during that time they will have directions to follow, or traffic signs, or a combination of the two. They may get shown a diagram too.

Newspapers have claimed this is going to lead to a further lowering of the pass rate in the practical test, but the DSA says on its website that this claim was based on early research and not on the final design of this element in the test.

There is more information on this story on the DSA website here:

http://dsa.gov.uk/News.asp?id=SXD005-A7835A58

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