For most of the test you are not being given turn-by-turn directions. DVSA calls it independent driving, and its point is to see whether you can make your own decisions on the road rather than execute instructions. It lasts 20 to 35 minutes, which on a drive of around 35 minutes means it is not a section of the test so much as most of it.
What you follow
The examiner picks one of three things, and tells you which:
- A sat nav. The examiner brings it, mounts it and programmes the route before you move off. You cannot use your own device or your phone.
- Traffic signs. You are asked to follow signs to a place — "follow the signs for the city centre" — and you keep going until told otherwise.
- Both. A combination, at the examiner's discretion.
You do not get to choose, and you will not know in advance. Preparing for only one of them is the mistake — plenty of learners drill sat-nav following and are then thrown by being asked to follow signs to a town they have never driven to.
The thing that is actually being tested
Not navigation. DVSA states plainly that the examiner will not give you a fault for taking a wrong turning. If you miss a turn, you have not lost anything — the examiner simply redirects you and the route carries on.
What gets marked is everything you do around the mistake. Braking hard when you realise, swerving across a lane to make the exit, stopping where you should not, or turning to look at the screen instead of the road. Those are ordinary faults and they count exactly as they would at any other point in the test. The wrong turn is free; the reaction to it is not.
Signs beat the sat nav, always
Sat navs are wrong sometimes. They route you into one-way streets the wrong way, tell you to turn where turning is banned, and lag behind roadworks. If the device says one thing and the road says another, the road wins — every time, without exception.
This comes up more often than you would expect, and it is a straightforward serious fault if you obey the screen into an illegal manoeuvre. The examiner knows the device is imperfect. Following it off a cliff is not obedience, it is a failure to read the road.
How to practise it
- Have your instructor stop giving directions. Ask them to name a destination and then say nothing for twenty minutes. The silence is the part that needs rehearsing.
- Follow signs to somewhere unfamiliar. Pick a town on the signs near your test centre and get there without a map. This is the version people practise least.
- Use a sat nav mounted where the examiner will put it. Usually the windscreen or dashboard, in your eyeline but not in your view of the road. Get used to hearing an instruction rather than reading it.
- Deliberately miss a turn. Then practise not reacting: carry on, stay in lane, wait to be redirected. Rehearsing the recovery removes most of the fear.
- Drive the roads around your test centre. Independent driving is much easier when you broadly know where the signs point. Test routes explained covers how to work out which roads those are.
On the day
- You do not have to operate the sat nav. It is set up for you.
- You can ask for the volume up, or for it to be turned off if it distracts you.
- You can ask the examiner to repeat any direction, as many times as you need.
- If you cannot see the screen properly, say so before you move off.
- Lane choice is on you — get into the right lane early rather than at the junction.
Durations and rules from DVSA's guidance on what happens during the test , published on GOV.UK.
Next: how faults are marked, and how to run a proper mock test.
