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How would they do it better? The randomness of real roads is something drivers have to deal with, and the test routes are supposed to be 45 minutes covering a v

How would they do it better? The randomness of real roads is something drivers have to deal with, and the test routes are supposed to be 45 minutes covering a variety of road conditions, so it's near impossible to pass if you haven't got the hang of basics like picking a suitable lane and merging at roundabouts and checking stuff in mirrors which is what it's testing for, regardless of traffic levels and roadworks and some cities having different layouts to others. There isn't an expectation that new drivers will never be flummoxed by encountering weird behaviour from other drivers or an oddly laid out junction, and you can rebook another test asap if you're confident the only things you were failed on were hesitancy or overcorrection in response to chance events. As with most learning processes which finish with an exam, the need to undergo a general learning process to get to the stage where it's likely that you will actually pass is more important than the exact equivalence of the tests.

dom96 4y ago
They could set up a test courses which are deterministic. > and you can rebook another test asap if you're confident the only things you were failed on were hesitancy or overcorrection in response to chance events. Yeah? How can I do that when tests are all booked pretty much everywhere for the next 4 months? If I fail I am likely waiting another 4 months before I can get another test. The fact is that test centres have wildly different pass rates (some as high as 80% vs. some as low as 38%). That kind of variance shows that the testing is not fair.
- notahacker 4y ago
  I'm not even sure what a deterministic test course would look like, or how optimising for this would prepare people for real world road conditions? Few things are less deterministic than traffic.
dagw 4y ago
The randomness of real roads is something drivers have to deal with I think the point is that depending on circumstances you can spend either 45 minutes driving down a more or less empty road or 45 minutes in rush hour traffic and it's basically impossible to judge someone equally in those two cases. I know people here in Sweden who after failing their test a couple of times in city traffic, schedule their next driving test at a test centre in a small rural village and pass easily. These people can then return home and start legally driving in the same city traffic they couldn't pass their drivers test in. There isn't an expectation that new drivers will never be flummoxed by encountering weird behaviour from other drivers or an oddly laid out junction Exactly! And that is why it is important that we make sure everybody gets tested on that before we give them a license.
- notahacker 4y ago
  > think the point is that depending on circumstances you can spend either 45 minutes driving down a more or less empty road or 45 minutes in rush hour traffic and it's basically impossible to judge someone equally in those two cases But you're highly unlikely to find a UK test centre where the routes consist of more or less empty roads (UK population is not distributed like Sweden's) > Exactly! And that is why it is important that we make sure everybody gets tested on that before we give them a license. The test isn't to ensure that they consistently handle weird behaviour from other drivers or oddly laid out junctions flawlessly (experienced drivers don't either). If we expected that, nobody would ever drive at all, at least not without thousands of hours in a simulator. It's to ensure their approaches to junctions are at sensible speeds and they pay attention to what's going on and use mirrors and signals. You can do that in high traffic or low traffic, and it's by no means certain that the low traffic conditions would more favourable to you anyway

dom96 4y ago

They could set up a test courses which are deterministic. > and you can rebook another test asap if you're confident the only things you were failed on were hesitancy or overcorrection in response to chance events. Yeah? How can I do that when tests are all booked pretty much everywhere for the next 4 months? If I fail I am likely waiting another 4 months before I can get another test. The fact is that test centres have wildly different pass rates (some as high as 80% vs. some as low as 38%). That kind of variance shows that the testing is not fair.

notahacker 4y ago
I'm not even sure what a deterministic test course would look like, or how optimising for this would prepare people for real world road conditions? Few things are less deterministic than traffic.

dagw 4y ago

The randomness of real roads is something drivers have to deal with I think the point is that depending on circumstances you can spend either 45 minutes driving down a more or less empty road or 45 minutes in rush hour traffic and it's basically impossible to judge someone equally in those two cases. I know people here in Sweden who after failing their test a couple of times in city traffic, schedule their next driving test at a test centre in a small rural village and pass easily. These people can then return home and start legally driving in the same city traffic they couldn't pass their drivers test in. There isn't an expectation that new drivers will never be flummoxed by encountering weird behaviour from other drivers or an oddly laid out junction Exactly! And that is why it is important that we make sure everybody gets tested on that before we give them a license.

notahacker 4y ago
> think the point is that depending on circumstances you can spend either 45 minutes driving down a more or less empty road or 45 minutes in rush hour traffic and it's basically impossible to judge someone equally in those two cases But you're highly unlikely to find a UK test centre where the routes consist of more or less empty roads (UK population is not distributed like Sweden's) > Exactly! And that is why it is important that we make sure everybody gets tested on that before we give them a license. The test isn't to ensure that they consistently handle weird behaviour from other drivers or oddly laid out junctions flawlessly (experienced drivers don't either). If we expected that, nobody would ever drive at all, at least not without thousands of hours in a simulator. It's to ensure their approaches to junctions are at sensible speeds and they pay attention to what's going on and use mirrors and signals. You can do that in high traffic or low traffic, and it's by no means certain that the low traffic conditions would more favourable to you anyway