News: When I tap the dashboard ... you’re about to crash

MIRROR, SIGNAL, MANGLED: almost 3,000 learner drivers crashed during their test in the past five years, including three who hit pedestrians.

Figures from the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, the new body responsible for driver training, show that an average of 580 drivers a year are involved in a collision while being assessed by an examiner.

The statistics do not reveal who was at fault for the crashes. Some may have been the fault of nervous students who were so busy remembering to glance in their mirrors that they forgot to look where they were going, but not all. Last October one driver abandoned her test when her car was rammed by a hit-and-run driver. Last year’s figures include 446 collisions involving drivers taking their test in cars, 22 in lorries and nine in coaches and buses.

Learners can take heart, though, because they are far less likely to crash during their test than to pass first time with no faults, something achieved by 7,381 drivers last year, from a total of 1.4m tests taken.