TLDR at the bottom.
Hey Everyone.
I failed my 1st driving exam today under something I consider suspicious circumstances.
Context: I have 30+ hours under my belt and my teacher says the 'education' has been completed. (Prüfungsreif)
First off, manoeuvring went great. He lauded my parking skills and appreciated my knowledge of the theory. The exam was in swissgerman (I am a Dutchman who moved here 16 years ago) I speak German and Swissgerman just fine.
It was when it started raining that I lowered my pace a bit, usually driving 5kph or more under the limit. He then started telling me to "hurry up and drive" putting on some pressure but nothing I thought I wouldn't be able to handle.
Finally, at a certain 80s road he told me to take the exit, it was quite a tight exit without an exit lane and a bike lane to cross. I signalled early and prepared to turn, but I had to slow down to about 40kph because the exit was real tight and I had just passed some cyclists who would have right of way if I couldn't make it in time. This caused a delivery van (who would have expected that?) behind me to have to slow down to 40 as well.
The examinator then shouted that I was 'obstructing traffic' which obviously made me quite nervous continuing onwards. Because of his shouting, I forgot to 'Einspuren' (Drive right before turning right) at the next intersection. This was my second mistake according to him. The final part (Highway) went fine, despite him pushing me to take a right exit at Wangen after merging all the way on the 3rd left lane of the highway to Uster.
It was his final verdict that surprised both me and my teacher. He was going to fail me because of obstruction of traffic. After asking him if I had endangered anyone, he said no. He just wanted to see me yield for pedestrians in a 30 zone less. (Except when there's a zebra crossing) and he wants me to 'keep up' with traffic more.
That was it. He told me he'd just signed my booklet and wanted to send my on my way. I insisted he'd give me his notes. He hadn't taken any, so he hastily wrote something down on his pc and handed me the print. He didn't specify which if these were Leichte(Small), Mittelschwere(Medium) or Schwere(Critical) mistakes. Basically 4 out of 5 of the reasons he provided are for driving a bit slower than average.
I'm just left wondering if this is typical? How can I fail my exam if my teacher insists I've got nothing left to learn, and I didn't endanger anybody? I used to work in railways here where everything is standardized with protocols. I can't believe this is typical here?
Should I ask the department of transport (Strassenverkehrsamt) to be sure?
TLDR; The Examinator did not use a grading or exam sheet during the exam and insisted I accept the verbal feedback and his signature on my learning licence. I'm wondering if this is typical or if I need to worry I may have been treated unfairly/unlawfully.
by Jack_Rannoch
13 comments
Jesus, it just happens! Just take the exam again and don’t make a fuss, like thousands of others have done before you!
I only passed on my 3rd attempt after >70 hours. I never understood why I failed my first attempt. Seemed unfair.
My thoughts on your situation:
Both examiner and teacher seem unprofessional.
The examiner because they were rude, didn’t explain mistakes well, and probably unfair.
The teacher because it’s very overconfident to insist being prüfungsreif after 30 hours. I mean, it’s possible, but they seemed very sure of themselves.
It is possible your teacher did not teach you well enough, especially on how to drive under pressure.
It’s also likely that your examiner was tough on you because it was your first attempt.
I passed mine after roughly 24h and I’m nearly 40ti. I don’t think the amount of hours is a fit for all.
According to my own experience as well as the experience of many of my peers, it’s highly dependent on the examiner you get.
Back in the days I failed my 1st attempt because I have allegedly endangered another motoris by denying his right of way.
What really happened was that this other motorist illegally passed over a “Sperrfläche” (restricted area) and only by doing so was able to create the situation where I “obstructed” him.
I’m not sure if the examiner didn’t pay attention or if he really thought that one has to stop preemptively in case otheres want to do some illegal maneuvers.
Now for your situation: To be honest, that “exit” may be a little bit tight, but it’s leading away from the street in a pretty good angle so that I would agree that slowing down to 40km/h seems a bit too careful. If a super tight exit leads away from the road in a 90° angle that’s another story. But here it’s more like a lane change than like taking a “real” turn. So I think I can see where the criticism came from. Anway, good for you that you thought about the cyclists.
The “funny” thing is that it’s obvious that they *created* that “exit” specifically in a way to slow you down. This is why that little patch of grass comes right before. To make the perfect angle a bit less perfect and make you slow down for the cyclists. But maybe you slowed down a bit too much.
It happens, sometimes you just don’t get a very professional examiner. For me I took the test while having driven basically everyday for a year with a manual transmission. Even though I thought the worst situation I could find myself in was stalling it was “manque de fluidité” so basically like you I was driving slower that usually just a bit not too slowly to show the examiner that I was driving with care but he seemed to have thought otherwise. It felt surreal when he told me that this was the reason I failed because otherwise everything was fine.. Keep driving as much as you can, you’ll get there eventually
I can still astonish, amuse, and scare my friends by telling them that I eventually got a Swiss driver’s license after passing my exam age 39 with 6 hours of driving lessons!
I was living in California at the time, which has a very easy exam. When I moved back to Switzerland two years later, my US license got transferred to a Swiss one without any further tests.
Ironically, if you have a Swiss license, you still have to pass a driving test to get an US one.
I did my exam after 13 hours LOL
In China driving tests are conducted with AI and fully recorded, that’s the future.
Driving exams here can be completely arbitrary. I’m not a native, but I needed to take an exam to convert my license to a Swiss one. I decided to take a few lessons just to make sure I knew how things worked here vs. my previous 15 years driving in my home country. My driving instructor told me after a few sessions that he saw no issues with me driving and passing, and scheduled me for the exam using his car.
When the exam approached he called me and asked if I wanted to reschedule, not because he wasn’t available with his car, but because he found out who the examiner assigned to me was, and knew that this examiner almost NEVER allowed a foreigner to pass the first time for any reason.
I rescheduled, got a different examiner, and passed with zero issues on the first try.
The result is unfortunately highly dependent on the examiner.
When I was getting my motorbike license it was raining and I was doing the exam with my motard without ABS, in the course before the exam on road (when you have to emergency stop from 50km/h) the examiner told me “the stop was good but I would’ve liked to see a bit more brake”. After telling me the bike had no ABS and it was raining so I tried to make the stop as safe as possible he kept insisting that in an emergency you need to break really hard.
I had been riding motocross for almost 8 years so knew how to control a bike, the second time I just stomped on the rear brake, locked the wheel, bike fully sideways, stopped a lot further, looked at him and said “was that hard enough?” Apparently that was good for him but not the safer stop…
it sounds like you are not ready.
Well, if you get a prick that has a bad day there is not much you can do.
I feel you, had a similar experience on my first attempt. There I was nervous and naive so it was easy for him to lure me into a situation where he could let me fail.
On the second attempt I got another one. Was quite a rude one. I didn’t want to be an easy victim this time. Dissented on every remark he made and stood my ground.
Arrived back at the spot. His last remark was PASS but he needed to round it up 🙄 He made my day for sure 😜
Swiss examiners are basically a mafia at this point. Your fate can easily end up in the hands of an unprofessional douchebag and their mood swings, with next to no accountability for them and no means of recourse for you. And you have to pay for all of this opaque bullshit.
If repeated failure can force the student into mandatory psychological visits, then driving exams should always be recorded (dashcam + inwards-facing camera) and systematically reviewed by an independent party. They can’t have it both ways.
My first driving examiner is one of the rare people I have personally met that I truly cannot muster even an ounce of respect for. Zero. Such behaviour in any other job would get one fired faster than you can say it. But not there, because of the power dynamics and the outdated administration behind it. These fucking people are paid more than professional escorts yet you are still the one getting shagged in the end.
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