Now it is getting seriously serious: your practical car test is just around the corner, and applying the following 4 tips will raise your chances of success dramatically. Like many learner drivers before you, you are of course wrestling with the question of how to survive this difficult hour in one piece. If you follow the tips below, success is as good as guaranteed:
Before we start. This video gives you 7 further very valuable tips for the driving test.
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1. Keep to the speed limit
During the car test it can happen that, in all the excitement, you forget to keep an eye on your speed. The examiner in the passenger seat is a qualified professional who, from experience alone, can judge your speed – without so much as glancing at the speedometer.
So always keep one eye on the needle and use the other to match your speed to the limit and to the traffic conditions. Do not let an impatient tailgater unsettle you, but for heaven’s sake do not creep over-cautiously through the rush hour either.
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2. Be friendly and obliging
Please bear in mind that the examiner is a human being who is doing his job in this situation. That gets on his nerves occasionally too. He does of course have to assess you objectively, but making a good impression is something we warmly recommend.
Introduce yourself in a friendly way and with your sunniest disposition when you greet him, and during the drive an easy-going but consistently focused attitude is in both your interests. If the examiner makes a remark while you are driving, simply try to act on it as well as you can.
But there are also examiners from whom not a single word can be coaxed, whatever you do – they sit in silence. Do not let that unsettle you. Or better still: just be yourself.
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3. Do not put yourself under pressure
The day of the car test is stressful enough already, so do not make it even more stressful! The easiest approach is to treat the test drive mentally as a completely normal driving lesson – just with an unusually curious passenger. Statements like «I have to manage this…» or «If I do not pass the test, then…» needlessly raise your stress level and make a flawless test drive harder.
Keep the circle of people in the know about your grim test fate as small as possible; let in only those who need to know because they will be thinking of you. Try to keep the day free of additional strain as well.
Give yourself plenty of time for everything you plan. If you have a job, try to take the day off. And if you are still at school, avoid being distracted on the same day by a maths test coming up.
Try to turn up at the test drive rested and focused. It definitely does not help if you go to bed far too early the night before, then cannot fall asleep, and the most horrific test film of all runs in your head.
In 2018 around 125’000 candidates in Switzerland passed the car test – so there is no reason at all why you should not be one of them. You have certainly mastered bigger hurdles in your life. If you are still unsure, simply read the gripping account of Sophie’s driving test. It also gives you valuable tips for the car test.
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4. Do not believe every fairytale
A great many stories go around about the practical car test. Often they are the subjective impressions of a gifted storyteller, or freely invented tales that pin the blame for a failed driving test on the merciless and incompetent examiner.
The best known of these is certainly the one about a mysterious failure quota the examiners are obliged to meet, which has no basis in reality whatsoever – it is simply not true, so do not let it eat you up! An examiner has no reason to fail you. He has to stick to an official form.
You can download the official test form for the practical car test and see for yourself how little room for discretion it leaves him. You can also look up the general test requirements.
Nobody expects a perfect drive from you, because there is simply no such thing. If you drive confidently, with conviction and safely, you can pass the car test easily.
With these 4 tips for the car test you are now well equipped and can trust your own abilities.