The five things that fail most road tests here

After every road test in one of our cars, the instructor writes down what the examiner marked. Over the years the same five things keep coming up. None of them is about skill. They are all habits, which is good news, because habits can be fixed in a week.

1. Rolling through stop signs

The most common one by a distance. A rolling stop is when the car slows to a crawl and carries on without ever being stationary. In daily driving people get away with it. On the driving test, it is the fastest way to fail.

The fix: stop behind the line, feel the car settle back on its springs, count “one, two”, then look left, right, left. If you can’t see, creep forward and stop again.

2. Lane changes without a head check

Mirrors don’t show the blind spot. Examiners watch for your head to turn before every lane change and every time you pull away from the curb.

The fix: make the head check big and obvious for a week of practice drives. It feels theatrical. It is meant to.

3. The cones

Ohio’s road test starts with the maneuverability test: drive forward through a box of cones, steer around a center cone, stop, then reverse back out. People who have only ever driven forwards meet reversing on test day.

The fix: set up four markers in an empty lot (shoes will do) and reverse through them ten times. Slowly. Speed in the box is never the problem; steering too late is.

4. Driving too slowly

Nervous drivers creep: twenty-two in a thirty-five, braking hard for every green light in case it changes. Examiners call it impeding traffic, and it counts against you just like speeding does.

The fix: drive at the posted limit on quiet roads until it feels normal. On a highway or freeway, match the flow of traffic in the right lane.

5. Wide and cut turns

Turning right into the far lane instead of the nearest one. Turning left and cutting across the center line. Both come from looking at the hood instead of where the car is going.

The fix: look through the turn to the lane you want to end up in. The car follows your eyes.

One more, for luck

Signal every turn, including the ones out of the test-site parking lot. You would be amazed.

If you want to know which of these is yours before the examiner finds it, book a mock road test. We score it the same way, on the same streets.