From 27 April 2009, the DSA is introducing a new motorcycle practical test. For those of you that do not yet have a full motorcycle license, a lot is about to change!
The current test
Currently, the test involves just riding on the road, with the examiner on a separate vehicle following you, telling you via intercom where to go – as well as an eyesight test and some bike maintenance/handling questions. You need to make sure you follow all the rules, ride at the appropriate speed, appropriate position on the road, and so on. Sometime during this test, you will need to show two special manoeuvres; a U-turn and an emergency stop. both are usually done one after the other – the examiner will ask you to pull over and get off your bike. He will then tell you to push the bike (while walking!) in a U-turn to the other side of the road. Then you should get on the bike, start it and when it is safe, do a U-turn to the position you initially stopped at. Then he will give you instructions for your Emergency Stop manoeuvre; at a speed of about 20-25 mph approach the examiner, when he raises his hand, you bring the motorcycle to a stop, safely and as quickly as you can, without any skidding or loss of control! When you’re stopped, you check your mirrors, put it in first gear, check your shoulders, indicate left and pull over on the side of the road.
So far so good, you basically need to know how to ride on the road; abiding by the rules and without interfering with other traffic. One would think that that would be all that can reasonably be expected from a new rider……….. But apparently not so – because this new test is being introduced!
The new test
Apparently the DSA seems to think that motorcyclists and moped riders are a hazard to themselves and/or other road users (“They have a high risk of injury or death”) – not taking into account that if you’re on two wheels without protective bodywork surrounding you, you will always have a higher risk of injury or death, even if the accident wasn’t your fault to begin with.
So they’re introducing this new test which is supposed to make every new rider extremely skilled and safe on the road. The new test will have two parts; an off road part where various manoeuvres are to be performed at slow as well as higher speeds and an on road part, which seems to be quite similar to what the current test is. So the off road part is where the problem lies:
- at least 2 slow speed manoeuvres including a slalom
- at least 2 higher speed manoeuvres; one at 19mph or more (second or third gear) and one exercise where you need to avoid an obstacle at 32mph or more.
- at least 2 braking manoeuvres, including an emergency stop at 32mph or more.
This causes a whole host of problems; not only is the level of expertise they demand extremely high and unreasonable for a new rider, also do some of the minimum speed requirements exclude certain lower cc vehicles from even being used for the test (In a limited space, get to 32mph and swerve to avoid an obstacle stop without riding off the course!)
One of the slow speed manoeuvres involves for instance riding your bike in first gear while the examiner walks around the course at varying speeds, and you’re supposed to stay next to him at his pace throughout.
OK so it’s tough, but practically what will change?
At the moment, it is possible for a novice to do a 5 day training course with an approved motorcycle training school and pass the practical test at the end of it. This currently would cost maybe around 600-700 quid (depending on whether you hire a bike or use your own).
However, talking to some of the instructors I’ve learned from myself, they found the new test extremely tough themselves! And I’m talking about guys with years and years of riding experience!
So for the new test, any course you were planning on taking, add another two days (roughly £200) on top of that, and MAYBE you’ll pass. So for a complete beginner, at least 7 days of consecutive training will be required. For a more experienced rider, 5 days instead of 3.
The implications do not just end there. If it’s so difficult to pass a test, many people may just give up before starting. The instructor I learned from is already looking at alternate career options, should nobody want to do motorcycle training any more after the new test is introduced.
It’s not rocket science to figure out that if the test is more difficult, less people will do it. Instead they might ride without a license (not ideal) or they will keep driving cars and whatever else can be driven with a car license (trikes, quads, etc.) which in turn will increase congestion.
All I can say is, I’m glad I passed my test before this insanity started. And not only is this a prime example that people sitting behind desks shouldn’t actually make any decisions, it is also an absolute triumph for red-tapeism – from those that invented it!
I’ve just come “back to biking” after passing my 50cc test on a FS1E (oh how I loved it) more than 30 years ago.
Now that 50cc’s are restricted I opted for a 2nd hand Suzuki Intruder 125 – a great bike – with the intention of passing this year and upgrading to a decent cruiser bike.
The first obstacle was finding my past test “pass” was no longer valid (at the time it enabled me to ride much bigger bikes). I then had to shell out for a CBT only to find the whole test process is changing.
I have £7k saved and all this cash would have gone to help a struggling bike dealer via a new bike purchase with subsequent spend on gear, accessories and servicing.
As things are, it looks likley I will be a 125 rider for ever more. I now have to pass not one test – but four: CBT, Theory, Off-road practical and on-road practical.
This ain’t just a hill to climb, its Mount Everest.
Nothing like this applies to car driving yet even the smallest car is heavier, more powerful and more dangerous in the hands of a learner.
I’m even thinking of ditching the 125 for an original unrestricted Fizzy (which could achieve similar top speeds) – but I think it’ll require a tad more than the £189 I paid for one new in 1974!
Hi David, welcome to the blog!
I completely agree with you. It is as if they’re trying not to regulate motorcyclists to make them safer on the road, but completely stamp out the entire breed! To be honest, who is more dangerous on the road, a total beginner with a CBT on a 125cc bike, or someone who passed the old practical test which to be honest already requires a certain amount of skill which cannot be faked easily!
However, if you do have that amount of cash saved up, provided you get enough time, you could do a riding course to prepare you for the new test. Sure you’d be jumping through all the outrageous hoops the DSA has put up, but at least you can ride whatever you like afterwards.
All I can say is I hope this nonsense gets reversed once people realise how silly it all is!
FANTASTIC!
How’s that?
The style of writing is very familiar . Did you write guest posts for other bloggers?
I’ll share it on Twitter.
@Ex Back – No never have, probably never will. I simply don’t have the time
Thanks for commenting though
@JareGrIerse – Great, thanks for stopping by!
Hey Hedonist – you’ve been very quiet of late. And it’s riding season again. And the EU are about to make the test EVEN HARDER with three new categories of test to be able to ride low power, mid power and decent horsepower bikes. Want a bigger bike – take another test.
Kiss goodbye to young riders, say ta-ra to your local bike shop and watch biking become the total preserve of old fogey’s who passed their test before the Health & Safety Mafia took control and now have to keep ever older machines on the road with scrounged ebay parts.
Hi David, indeed I have. Been absolutely swamped with work & DIY (recently moved house).
To be honest I haven’t done any riding even, except for a short weekend trip to Cornwall (does being a pillion count?)
About those new plans – that does sound horrible. No doubt thought up by a bunch of pencil pushers who have never even seen a bike up close. The one thing I never understood about people shouting it’s so dangerous to ride a bike is they seem to forget that yes – it’s risky, but mainly for the person riding it. As opposed to someone ploughing into another road user while driving a huge SUV, what damage is a motorcycle going to do to the other party? Common sense is dying out it seems…
Hi,
Having just taken and passed my Mod 1 test this morning, I completely disagree with your conclusion.
Looking at your comments in turn:
“not only is the level of expertise they demand extremely high and unreasonable for a new rider”
Not at all. I am convinced that if you can’t pass the Mod 1 test you aren’t safe to be riding on the roads. Sure, it’s easy to fail by making a stupid mistake, but that’s the whole point. Just look at each of the manoeuvres in turn and you will see that there is not one of them that is by any definition difficult.
In any case, there’s no reason why you have to take the test as a new rider. I rode on a CBT for 18 months before taking my Mod 1. Of course, if you’re in a hurry to get onto a big proper bike, then you might fail. Maybe that’s not a bad thing?
“also do some of the minimum speed requirements exclude certain lower cc vehicles from even being used for the test (In a limited space, get to 32mph and swerve to avoid an obstacle stop without riding off the course!)”
In practice, most people taking the test will be on a 125cc (I believe the minimum is 70cc, and who buys a 100cc bike these days?). If you aren’t capable of getting to 32mph (in what is actually quite a big space), carrying out a fairly gentle swerve (and it really isn’t hard), and stopping (and it’s not an emergency stop), then you aren’t competent.
“One of the slow speed manoeuvres involves for instance riding your bike in first gear while the examiner walks around the course at varying speeds, and you’re supposed to stay next to him at his pace throughout.”
Rubbish. That just isn’t true. The part you are referring to involves the examiner walking at a normal pace for about 10m, and all you’re asked to do is not overtake. If you can’t do that, you can’t ride in traffic. So you’re not competent.
If there is anyone who decides not to take their test on the basis of Mod 1 being “too difficult”, I think that’d be a good thing; because if you find it hard, you’re not ready to ride on the roads.
And as for David’s comment: “As things are, it looks likley I will be a 125 rider for ever more. I now have to pass not one test – but four: CBT, Theory, Off-road practical and on-road practical.”
Most people will need a CBT to ride a 125 anyway, plus they’ll have to retake it every 2 years if they don’t pass the others in the meantime. The Theory is laughably easy (anyone who fails that should be banned from riding and driving for life!). The on-road practical is now easier as you don’t have to do the slow-speed manoeuvres/emergency stop/etc. So the only change is that you have to go to the test centre twice instead of once. Big deal. If that puts you off riding, I’d suggest you were never really keen on the idea in the first place.
I think the Mod 1 is a great idea and I personally thing that they should do the same with cars; to avoid clutting up the roads with people doing the slow-speed parts of their tests. And while we’re about it why not mandate that new learners should be forced to meet a certain standard off road before being allowed on the road? Like a CBT for drivers, really.
All this pathetic bleating about the Mod 1 is simply people not using their brains. Think about it; what’s best, getting people to do an emergency stop on the road, or off it? Isn’t it obvious?
Rgds,
Peter
…and another thing:
“what damage is a motorcycle going to do to the other party?”
A friend of mine was killed a few weeks back when they were hit by a motorcycle. So your whole argument is simply not valid.
“Common sense is dying out it seems…”
Too right. It sounds like yours has gone completely!
Wonderful, a debate. If you look at when that post was written, it’s been a while. What I wrote was based on talking to instructors at the riding school where I trained to pass my test (shortly before the new one was introduced – and as I said, they felt it was too difficult. Perhaps now they’ve relaxed the requirements?) and articles covering the same topic elsewhere. I have not taken this test personally, so it’s helpful to hear from someone who has. The point I was trying to make was, the old test already required the new rider to do certain manoeuvres showing that he/she has decent control of the bike. If the only difference between the old test and the new test is that you need to turn up twice, and do not obstruct traffic with slow speed U turns and such because that part of the test is done off road, great! But when the news of the new test came out, it did not sound like that at all! The test I took wasn’t a walk in the park, it did demand certain skill, so to think that before the new test came along you could pass even if you couldn’t ride properly is just silly. The stories that were going around short before / during the transition period to the new test were that most test centres were ill equipped to handle the off road part (too small, not enough space to speed up on smaller bikes) and that especially swerving wasn’t necessarily a great idea on certain road surfaces at the speeds suggested if god forbid it should rain. I remember reading on MCN that one of the first people to attempt the new test went down because it had been raining and the test area was muddy. Whether or not that means he wasn’t a good rider is a different story – even experienced riders may skid and lose control in some conditions. Add to that the fact that you need to pay for two tests instead of one, and extra training to get everything right, motorcycles become less accessible as a mode of transport and encourage people to try and avoid them.
I take your point of riding for a while after having done your CBT, that’s a great idea indeed if you know what you’re doing. I did my CBT, then a short course about 1.5 months later to prepare me for the test. But I already had experience of riding a two wheeler in another country so I wasn’t a total novice. People who just do a course starting with their CBT on one day and finishing a few days later after intensive training and doing their test immediately cannot possibly gain a lot of experience over such a short time period. But the flip side is that someone who has done a CBT, hasn’t actually passed any test at all, whether theory or practical, and is let loose on the road on something that is potentially quite a fast machine.
Regarding cars – I remember learning to drive myself, it was absolutely nerve wrecking having to go out on to the road in a fairly congested area when you’ve barely got the hang of how the gears and clutch work. Add on the fact that for some bizarre reason it’s acceptable in this country to park on both sides of the road, meaning only one car can pass at a time, rather than obstruct the poor pedestrians by parking on the kerb, it’s a recipe for disaster. If the facility existed to go off road somewhere onto a track where learners could practice how to operate the car without having to worry about having impatient people tailgating them, I certainly would’ve made use of it. But this doesn’t exist, and I suppose a lot of places wouldn’t have the space to create such a track either. The truth is, nowadays it’s a prerequisite to have a driving license for a lot of jobs, or if you live in a place with less than perfect public transport. Do you want to create a country where getting a license is only within reach of those who are well off by piling on more tests (fees), extra lessons, and travel to the needed off road test facilities? Though one thing I will say, it is absolutely ridiculous that nobody teaches you motorway driving here. Elsewhere in Europe it is part of the learning process, here you just “have a go” after getting your pass certificate, or shell out more money for an advanced driving course.
If you refer to statistics and crash tests, you will find that the larger vehicle in an accident is less likely to sustain serious damage than the smaller vehicle. A modern SUV is more likely to protect its passengers rather than a scooter/motorcycle or even your average small car. I’m sorry your friend was killed in an accident with a motorcyclist (did he live btw or was he killed as well?), but surely that sort of outcome is the exception rather than the rule.