Get Britain Driving Again
The Circumlocution Office is taking over
The UK government is going to make it mandatory to wait six months between taking the written test and the practical test, the BBC reports:
This is supposed to be part of a larger set of measures to improve road safety. But really it’s a way of avoiding the real problem: the million test backlog.
In the last few years, the waiting time to take a driving test in the UK has gone up to about six months. The Guardian reported in December:
About 70% of driving test centres have every slot fully booked for the maximum 24 available weeks ahead.
This causes obvious problems—young people are already facing historically high house prices thanks to restricted supply, now they can’t even get a driving licence.
Many UK towns and cities lack adequate public transport too. A city the size of Leeds or Bristol really ought to have a tram, and in most European countries would do so. London has excellent public transport, but such high house prices that many people cannot afford to move there.1
And why does it take so long to get a driving test? Undersupply.
There aren’t enough examiners. The DVSA has only hired a net of 83 more examiners since 2021. Their pay is too low. On top of that, the Driver & Vehicle Standards Agency loses money on every test. A large secondary market has opened up where test slots are resold at eight times their original value.
All of this is a glaring case of a broken market. Allow prices to rise and more examiners will be able to administer more tests. The alternative is to continue the delays.
The DVLA expects the 24 week wait time to persist into 2027. According to End the Backlog, Ellen Pasternack’s campaign to improve this situation, it will take five years to get through the outstanding one million driving tests. As they say, it is likely to be worthwhile for the government to spend money to reduce it faster as so many jobs require a driving licence.
Worst of all, according to the DVLA’s own data, the pass rate for a driving test is just under half. So most of the people trying to get licences then have to wait for another six months.
In contrast, here in Arlington, I walked into the DMV one day and took my theory and practical test. I didn’t need an appointment. It was all done within an hour. I do think the standard of driving is worse in Virginia than in England. But British roads are really quite safe. Casualties have fallen by 90% since 1960 and halved since 2006. Whitehall doesn’t need to consult about making the roads safer: it needs to solve the problem that means a million young people will have to wait six to twelve months to get a licence. If not longer.
The real reason the government is going to make it official policy to wait for six months between the theory and practical test is that it is much easier to make a law that says the problem isn’t a problem than it is to actually fix the underlying issues. End the Backlog has a plan to solve the problem.
Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving—HOW NOT TO DO IT.
According to the Center for Cities, “In five of the nine largest cities outside London, the area within a 30-minute commute is similar in size to their European peers.”
Henry. Your frustration is understandable, but cherry-picking things that are done better in the US that you haven't encountered before isn't exactly serious. We all know that the UK government when it is actually trying to achieve something, rather than just campaign, faces two big problems: (1) there are no good national systems in place, just an accreted patchwork of contingent micro-policies plastered one on top of the other, so it's administratively impossible to get anything done; and (2) there isn't any money.
Well, yes, is the answer to your cry of anguish.
It's easier for small countries that set up their administrative systems later. But the UK isn't one of those. And there it is.