About | Driving Test Centre Statistics

In 2024, I became interested in understanding why the driving test pass rate varied so significantly between test centres across the UK. I wanted the precise reasons - it's not enough to say the roads in area X are harder in general. I submitted a Freedom of Information request to the DVSA, and received detailed statistics on the faults recorded for each driving test. The dataset includes over one million anonymised test sheets from 2023, with dates, times and locations.

With this data, it is now possible to see:

Which faults are disproportionately recorded at each test centre compared to the national average.
Whether there is any advantage to taking your test at a specific time of day (spoiler: not really).
Which maneuvres are most challenging, and how they affect your chances of passing.

Due to limited test slot availability, many candidates cannot book their preferred, nearby test centre and must consider unfamiliar locations, located hours away. This website aims to help you prepare for your test by understanding what makes each centre unique—perhaps even helping you select a test centre suited to your strengths and weaknesses. For instance, if you're confident with observations but struggle with making the most of fast roads, avoid centres where more candidates fail for "Progress - speed", and don't be discouraged by higher rates of "Junctions - observations" faults. If you are stuck with one particular test centre, at the very least, you know what to focus on.

This project is open-source on GitHub. There, you’ll find:

The website's front-end code.
Aggregated data used on this website.
Hand-crafted explanations for each fault in JSON. This is ideally something the DVSA would publish, rather than leaving individuals like myself to piece it together from the vague guidance on GOV.UK and mock test clips on YouTube.

A separate GitHub repo, contains the raw data provided by the DVSA in CSV format and Python scripts used to process and aggregate the data by test centre.

Whether you are a learner driver or an instructor, I hope this resource helps you as much as it has helped me in researching the nuances of each test centre.

If you spot any errors in the data or explanations, feel free to raise an issue or submit a pull request on GitHub.