Ready for the practical exam

What is assessed

Not whether you can operate a car — that is assumed. What is assessed is whether you take part in traffic safely and independently: looking, anticipating, choosing your place on the road, and matching your speed to what you can see.

The three mistakes most often fatal

Not looking during a special manoeuvre. Pulling away, turning around, reversing, changing lanes and entering from a driveway are special manoeuvres: you must let ALL other traffic go first. A glance in the mirror is not looking; you check the blind spot by turning your head.

Turning right without the cyclist. Turning right across a cycle path you cross the path of someone going straight on, and straight ahead takes precedence over turning traffic. A whole cyclist fits into a truck's blind spot; a car's is smaller, but not zero.

Faster than your sight distance allows. Art. 19 RVV is the measure: you must be able to stop within the stretch you can see and which is clear. A sign showing 80 in dense fog does not give you 80.

What people underestimate

Too slow is a fault too. Driving unnecessarily slowly obstructs others and counts in the assessment.

Get into lane early. Changing lanes at the last moment is a special manoeuvre under time pressure — exactly the situation in which you can no longer calmly let other traffic go first.

Look where the examiner looks. At a zebra, a school zone and a driveway what matters is not the rule but whether you saw in time who was coming.

Your rights during the exam

  • Exam-anxiety practical exam. Longer, taken by an examiner trained for it.

Costs € 202.00 instead of € 143.50.

  • Interim test. Halfway through training, to the same standard, without a

pass result. Allowed from 16.5.

  • An explanation afterwards. You are entitled to a debrief on the result.

Just before the exam

Bring what you must be able to show on first demand: your identity document, and your licence if you already hold one. Make sure the health declaration has been dealt with — without it the exam does not go ahead.

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