Would you pass your driving test today?

Driving into the sun

For those of us who have been driving for years, we think we know the rules of the road and the best ways to avoid those drivers who don’t. We may be able to get ourselves from A to B safely most of the time, but are we really abiding to traffic laws?

The Driving Survey

Driving into the sun
Driving into the sun

Brake, the road safety charity, collaborated with Direct Line to compose a survey asking drivers about their habits on the road. The survey consisted of 1000 drivers throughout the UK and revealed interesting results.

The majority of drivers stated that they were more confident in the safety of their own driving now than they were 10 years ago, and yet 49% said they disregarded road regulations on a daily basis. 50% of drivers said they believed they drove safer than most others on the road, with 58% saying that most of the drivers on the road are dangerous.

Those involved in the survey were asked what unsafe behaviour they had witnessed in the last year, with distraction caused by mobile phones being the top of the list, followed by tailgating, speeding, and unsafe overtaking.

Of course these are all things we are taught not to do whilst learning to drive, and would cause us to fail our tests if we did. So…

Why do we do it?

Half of the drivers taking the survey said that lack of attention caused them to break the rules of the road, whereas the other half stated that they broke the law knowingly, believing that they would not suffer any consequences. Neither reason is an acceptable excuse to ignore the rules we were taught when we were taking our tests, and the laws that have been put in place to keep us safe, but these results suggest many drivers seem to believe they are beyond the law.

The issue does not seem to be that drivers have forgotten the rules that they were taught back when they were learning , but that their respect for these laws has diminished as they have become more confident drivers. The question lies in what we can do to stop this from happening.

Excel Driving Academy have put together this driving test quiz to test whether you would pass your driving test if you took it today. Why not take a look and see if you are abiding by the rules of the road?