Driving test faults explained: how many minors you can have, and what counts as serious
You can have up to 15 minors on a driving test and still pass. Make 16 and you fail. Make one serious or dangerous fault and you fail too, even with a clean sheet everywhere else. That is the whole pass mark, set out on GOV.UK's driving test faults page for car tests in England, Scotland and Wales.
The number of minors matters far less than whether any single mistake gets marked as serious. Below: how examiners make that call, what the DL25 marking sheet shows, and the faults that fail the most tests according to DVSA's own data.
How many minors can you have on a driving test?
| Fault type | Also called | How many you can have |
|---|---|---|
| Driving fault | Minor | Up to 15 |
| Serious fault | Major | None |
| Dangerous fault | Major | None |
DVSA's examiner guidance, the DT1 guide to assessment and marking, puts the fail threshold the other way round: an accumulation of 16 or more driving faults fails the test.
A clean sheet is rare. In DVSA's zero faults table (DRT121E) for April 2025 to March 2026, 50,787 of the 1,998,621 car tests conducted in Great Britain were passed with no faults at all. That is 2.5% of all tests and 5.1% of passes. The overall pass rate that year was 50.0%. Most people who pass have a few minors on their result, and that is normal.
Minor, serious and dangerous faults defined
GOV.UK sets out 3 types of fault. In plain terms:
- Dangerous fault: involves actual danger to you, the examiner, the public or property.
- Serious fault: something potentially dangerous. DVSA's examiner guidance adds that a breach of the law also counts as serious.
- Driving fault (a minor): not potentially dangerous. DVSA's examiner guidance describes it as falling short of the standard of a safe and competent driver. Keep making the same one and it can become a serious fault.
There is a fourth level that never appears on your result. The DT1 guidance calls it "not worthy": a tiny deviation that does not affect safety or is a matter of finesse. Its examples are dry steering, sequential gear changes and not pressing the button on the handbrake when you apply it. None of those gets marked.
The clearest way to see the difference is one kind of mistake at three levels. These are DVSA's own examples from its guidance on mock driving tests:
| Situation | Fault type |
|---|---|
| You stall moving away and no other road user is affected | Driving fault |
| You stall repeatedly when trying to move away | Serious fault |
| You stall moving away uphill and roll back towards a car behind, causing actual danger | Dangerous fault |
| You check mirrors late before changing direction | Driving fault |
| You do not use the exterior mirror before a significant change of direction | Serious fault |
| You skip the mirrors altogether and someone is put in actual danger | Dangerous fault |
What decides the level is how far short of the standard the mistake fell, whether safety or control was compromised, and whether a legal requirement was breached. Those are the questions the mock test guidance tells instructors to ask when they mark.
Reading the DL25 marking sheet
The DL25 is DVSA's car driving test report, usually called the marking sheet. GOV.UK explains that examiners now record results on a tablet and only fall back on the paper form if the tablet has a problem. Driving instructors use the printable version for mock tests. They are not allowed to use a tablet version during lessons, because it is illegal to use a tablet while supervising a learner.
The sheet is split into headings, and each heading into boxes. The headings are:
- Eyesight test
- Manoeuvres (reverse right, reverse park on the road or in a car park, forward park), each marked for control and observation
- Show me / tell me
- Controlled stop (the emergency stop)
- Control: accelerator, clutch, gears, footbrake, parking brake, steering, precautions and ancillary controls
- Move off: safety and control
- Use of mirrors: signalling, change direction and change speed
- Signals: necessary, correctly and timed
- Junctions: approach speed, observation, turning right, turning left and cutting corners
- Judgement: overtaking, meeting and crossing
- Positioning: normal driving and lane discipline
- Separate boxes for pedestrian crossings, position or normal stop, awareness and planning, clearance, following distance and use of speed
- Progress: appropriate speed and undue hesitation
- Response to signs and signals: traffic signs, road markings, traffic lights, traffic controllers and other road users
How a fault gets recorded
Driving faults go down as a tally in the box. A serious or dangerous fault is marked against the S or D next to that box. The examiner waits until the event has finished before marking, and the same mistake should not be marked in two boxes (on a manoeuvre, marking both control and observation does not count as double marking). At the bottom, the total of driving faults sits beside the pass or fail result.
A few boxes work differently from the rest:
- Eyesight. If you cannot read the number plate, you fail and the test ends there, according to GOV.UK's page on what happens during the test.
- Show me / tell me. Getting the tell me question wrong, or a minor loss of control while you do the show me question on the move, is one driving fault. A serious loss of control during the show me question is a serious fault.
- ETA (examiner took action). The examiner marks this if they had to tell you to do something or take control of the car to avoid an incident. Your result will show it.
- Eco. Fuel-efficient driving is assessed during the test, but it does not affect the result.
Taking a wrong turning is not a fault at all. GOV.UK says the examiner will help you get back on the route.
After the test the examiner tells you what faults you made, and you get an email showing your driving, serious and dangerous faults. DVSA's guide to understanding your driving test result goes through each heading with examples of common faults and how to improve.
The most common reasons for failing (DVSA data)
DVSA publishes its top 10 faults every year in table DRT121F. Its top 10 reasons for failing guide uses the same list and gives examples of the mistakes that count under each one. For April 2025 to March 2026, the list was:
| Rank | DL25 box | What it looks like on test |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Junctions: observation | Pulling out and making an approaching car slow down, looking too late, or treating a crossroads as if it were not a junction |
| 2 | Mirrors: change direction | Changing lanes on a dual carriageway into the path of an approaching car, or leaving a roundabout without a mirror check and cutting across a following car |
| 3 | Junctions: turning right | Waiting too far left to turn right and holding up traffic, or using the left lane to turn right at a roundabout |
| 4 | Response to signs: traffic lights | Going on red, stopping past the first line at a cycle box, or waiting at a clear green |
| 5 | Control: steering | Mounting the pavement on a bend or when pulling up, or steering late into a side road |
| 6 | Move off: safely | Moving off into the path of an approaching vehicle, or repeatedly moving off with no blind spot check |
| 7 | Response to signs: road markings | Ignoring lane arrows, straddling lanes, entering a box junction with no clear exit |
| 8 | Response to signs: traffic signs | Ignoring a stop or no entry sign, reacting late or not at all to a new speed limit, or using a bus lane during its hours |
| 9 | Positioning: normal driving | Driving too close to the kerb or the centre line, or staying in the right-hand lane of a dual carriageway for no reason |
| 10 | Maintain progress: speed | Driving too slowly for the road, or holding up traffic |
The examples come from DVSA's guide (which covers April 2024 to March 2025, when the top 9 were the same faults in a slightly different order) and its mock test marking guidance. DVSA's mock test guidance gives driving at 20mph in a 30mph area with no reason as an example of a driving fault under appropriate speed. Over-caution gets marked.
Two things stand out in the history. Junction observation has been the number one fault in every year of DRT121F, back to April 2007 to March 2008. Mirrors before changing direction has been number two every year since April 2008 to March 2009. Reversing has dropped out: reverse parking control was last in the top 10 in April 2022 to March 2023.
Count the list another way and six of the ten are about looking and reacting: junction observation, mirrors, moving off safely and the three response to signs boxes. If you have a few lessons left before the test, junctions are the obvious place to start.
Pass rates vary by test centre too. Our guide to driving test centre pass rates covers the highest and lowest, and the test centre pass rates tool lets you look up your own.
Can repeated minors become a serious fault?
Yes. GOV.UK says that if you keep making the same driving fault, it could become a serious fault. DVSA's examiner guidance goes further: a candidate who habitually commits a driving fault in one aspect of driving throughout the test cannot be regarded as competent, and the repeated fault can be assessed as potentially dangerous. Its example is a candidate who habitually fails to check the mirrors when they should.
DVSA's mock test guidance and its top 10 guide give more examples of a repeated habit marked as serious:
- Not using the mirrors before signalling, repeatedly throughout the drive
- Harsh or uncontrolled use of the footbrake, habitually throughout the drive
- The clutch not pushed down in time, habitually throughout the drive
- Moving away from the side of the road with no blind spot checks, repeatedly through the test
You will often hear that 3 minors in the same box make a serious. Neither GOV.UK nor the examiner guidance sets a number. What the examiner looks at is the pattern: whether you keep doing it, and whether it has stopped being a one-off slip and become a risk. Two minors in different boxes tell a different story from four in the same one.
That is why a result like 6 minors and a fail is possible, and why a sheet with 12 minors spread across different boxes can still be a pass.
How examiners decide, and what instructors track
The rules examiners mark by
The DT1 guidance gives examiners a few tests to apply to each mistake:
- The first rule of assessment. If the drive had been perfect before this fault and perfect after it, would this fault alone fail you? If yes, it is serious or dangerous.
- The 16th fault rule. Before marking a minor, the examiner asks: if this were the 16th fault, could I justify failing the candidate for it? If not, it is not worth recording.
- Adding and taking away. Could anything be added to make the fault worse, or taken away to make it perfect? Brushing the kerb when pulling up is the guidance's example: hitting or mounting it would be worse, stopping slightly further out would be perfect.
- Breach of the law. Going through a red light, driving well above the limit or ignoring a stop sign is a serious fault.
The examiner will only stop the test early if your driving is a danger to other road users, GOV.UK says. If you make a mistake, carry on and drive the rest of the test well. One minor is one tally mark.
What instructors track before the test
The DVSA guidance on mock tests is written for instructors, and a mock test marked on a printed DL25 is the nearest you can get to the real result before test day. If you are nervous about the test itself, our guide to staying calm on test day covers why mock tests help with that too.
Before mocks, there is the skill-by-skill picture. DVSA's Ready to Pass campaign lists 27 driving skills and 5 levels of progress for each: introduced, helped, prompted, independent and reflection. DVSA says you are ready for your test when you are consistently at level 5 in all 27.
Instructors who use Orbit record each pupil's progress against those 27 skills, grouped the same way as DVSA's driver's record, from introduced through to independent. Pupils see where they are in their Orbit pupil portal between lessons and can keep their own reflective log. A pupil who is still at "prompted" on junctions has a fair idea where their test faults would come from.
How long it takes to get every skill to that standard varies a lot from one learner to the next. Our guide to how many driving lessons you need goes through what changes the number.
If you fail
The examiner tells you which faults you made. You need to book another test and pay again, and the new date has to be at least 10 working days away, according to GOV.UK. A car test costs £62 on a weekday and £75 in the evening, at weekends or on bank holidays.
You can appeal only if you can prove the examiner did not follow the law. Even then, GOV.UK says the result cannot be changed, though you might get a refund or a free retest.
Take the result to your instructor. The boxes with tallies and the S or D marks show exactly which skills to work on before the retest. If waiting times are the problem, see our guide to getting an earlier driving test date.
FAQ
How many minors can you have on a driving test?
Up to 15. You pass with 15 or fewer driving faults and no serious or dangerous faults. A 16th driving fault is a fail, and so is a single serious or dangerous fault.
How many minors does it take to fail a driving test?
Sixteen. You can also fail with far fewer if one minor is repeated so often that the examiner marks it as serious.
Do 3 minors in the same box make a serious fault?
There is no fixed number in DVSA's guidance. A fault made habitually throughout the test can be marked serious. The examiner judges the pattern and the risk.
What is the most common reason for failing a driving test?
Not making effective observations at junctions. It topped DVSA's list for April 2025 to March 2026, and has been first every year since April 2007 to March 2008.
Is a stall a fail on the driving test?
Not on its own. A stall with no one affected is DVSA's example of a driving fault. Repeated stalling is an example of a serious fault, and rolling back into danger after a stall uphill is a dangerous one.
What is a DL25?
DVSA's car driving test report, the marking sheet. Examiners use a tablet version and keep the paper DL25 as a backup. Instructors print it for mock tests.
Looking for an instructor who runs proper mock tests and tracks the 27 skills? Search driving instructors near you and ask them how they do it before you book.
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