Those lucky enough to secure a driving test in the current climate face the added pressure of knowing that if they fail to meet the examiner’s standards then it could be almost a year before they get another crack at securing a driving licence.

But data from the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency has revealed that in the many hundreds of thousands of driving tests taken every year, there are two clear faults which are catching the majority of rookie drivers out.

The DVSA statistics, from a period between January 2019 and December 2021 show that there were two fairly obvious dangerous faults - failure to observe junctions correctly and failing to check mirrors before changing direction. These may seem like fairly standard things to remember when you are on a driving test, but with 363,908 junction faults, and 285,465 mirror faults, that’s more than half a million failures for fairly basic manoeuvres.

The analysis comes courtesy of Avaris ebikes, who found that the two most common faults actually declined in 2021, however that is most likely to have been due to the lack of driving tests taken falling due to lockdowns.

So while it may sound fairly obvious that cutting out these simple errors could significantly increase your chances of passing a test, but at the same time making our roads safer. DVSA figures tell us that failing to look properly was a factor in more than one in three reported accidents in 2019.

“Not checking mirrors in the right way or taking the time to stop and look properly at a junction might seem like a minor to some drivers, but it can be the difference between getting home safely or being involved in an accident with another driver, a cyclist or a pedestrian,” said Richard Heys, founder of Avaris eBikes.

“People make these mistakes even once they’ve passed their driving tests, often when they’re in a rush or because they think the chances they’ll hit someone or something is low, but the truth is accidents can happen to anyone at any time, so caution and awareness on the roads is imperative.

“We value the lengths the DVSA go to ensure drivers are taking the right actions before they’re allowed on the roads by themselves.”

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