Zero-fault driving test passes have risen 10x since 2007 - from 0.2% of tests to 2.1%
Was looking at DRT121E (DVSA's zero-fault dataset, 2007-08 to 2024-25) and didn't expect to find this trend.
In 2007-08, 4,107 tests out of 1,762,148 were passed with zero driving faults. That's 0.2% of all tests.
In 2024-25: 39,038 out of 1,839,815. That's 2.1% of all tests, and 4.4% of passes.
So roughly the same number of tests conducted, but ten times as many perfect ones. The bars climb almost every single year on the chart.
What I can't quite square: the overall pass rate only moved from 44.2% to 48.7% in the same period. But the perfect tests went up quite a lot. So it's not that everyone's driving a bit better. It's that the top end has pulled away.
I don't really have a confident explanation. A couple of things that might be relevant:
- Test waits have pushed average lesson hours up so learners may be arriving at test better prepared than they were 15 years ago
- The 2010 independent driving section and 2017 sat-nav addition changed what's being tested. Possibly people prep harder for the named sections and leave fewer faults in the routine stuff
- COVID - the steepest single jump is 2019-20 to 2020-21 (1.2% to 1.7%), and the rate hasn't come back down since. That could be a smaller, more self-selected cohort during the pandemic, or it could be point number 1 again, more prepared candidates arriving because of waits
- DVSA definition changes of how the zero fault tests were recorded, classified or categorized ? (Found no proof for this)
Curious if any instructors or examiners here have noticed a real shift in the top end, or if the explanation is something more boring than I'm assuming.
If anyone wants to dig into it themselves, I’ve put the data here: https://drivesidekick.uk/stats/