We know that your heavy vehicle license course starts to wind down, your anxiety and nerves about your impending drive assessment start to wind up. We get it – anything (literally!) could happen whilst on your drive assessment and you’ll just have to deal with it in the best and safest way possible. It’s not the test per sae that gets some clients wound so tight – it’s the unknown – “Will I miss a gear?”, “Will a car pull out in front of me?”, “Will there be a lot of traffic?”, “Will I remember to check my mirrors”, the list goes on…

And often there is a lot riding on whether you pass or fail (like a new job starting on Monday if you can pass!). Talk about put yourself under the pump!

At Armstrongs we try to make it as EASY as possible to pass your drive assessment on your first attempt by giving you all the information you need to know in order to prepare and get yourself into the right head space before you jump in the truck (check out all our assessment and gearbox clips on each of the course pages!). At Armstrongs there are no secrets, no holding back on critical information, no conspiracy. We’re not trying to MAKE you fail so you have to pay for more training (beware of this with other training organisations).

So in the Armstrongs spirit of sharing, keep reading if you want to know exactly what the 7 Serious Mistakes are that will earn you an INSTANT FAIL (or what we officially refer to as a TEST TERMINATION) on your drive assessment:

1. Driving In a Dangerous Manner

Speeding, cutting someone off, driving up someone’s…tailgate, causing an accident etc. Could be anything else that creates a dangerous situation and causes another road user to take evasive action

2. Your Assessor Has To Intervene To Take Control or Give Direction To Control The Vehicle

Probably because you were driving in a dangerous manner! Could also be where you failed to scan an intersection correctly or check your mirrors and didn’t notice that car coming and your assessor has to jump on their safety brake or grab the steering wheel in order to avoid a collision.

3. Your Assessor Is Unable To Establish Appropriate Communication

Generally this results where the communication between the assessor and the student breaks down for some reason; a language barrier suddenly arises or for some reason you cannot hear or understand your assessor.

4. You Disobey a Direction Given By Your Assessor

This normally arises as a result of a student refusing to perform a particular skill. For example, you are instructed to “turn left at the next street” but you are not confident that you can perform that turn and therefore you continue straight ahead.

5. Failure To Use Correct Signals At Intersections

No further explanation needed.

6. Mounting Gutters

Goes without saying doesn’t it?

7. Creating a dangerous situation

As mentioned in ‘Driving in a Dangerous Manner’, creating a dangerous situation can also result in an instant fail. But to be clear, stalling the truck or even blocking traffic does not necessarily mean that you have created a dangerous situation. The key to whether or not you created a dangerous situation is whether other road users had to take evasive action.

AVOID these things and your half way there. Next time we’ll share things you actually want to DO while on your drive assessment. Think of them as the ‘low hanging fruit’. Things that will impress you assessor and give him the impression that you actually know what you’re doing! But that’s for next time…

You can find out more about all your heavy vehicle options on our heavy vehicle course page or give the team a call and they will be happy to walk your through it.