Hundreds of drivers had to unnecessarily retake the driver theory test after a glitch in the system wrongly marked one of the questions as incorrect.
The issue arose following a routine software upgrade in June and affected 1,216 candidates. Of these, 610 had retaken the test. Nobody passed the test that shouldn’t have passed.
In a statement, the Road Safety Authority said it became aware of the issue while investigating a recent re-score request from a candidate who had answered 34 out of 40 questions correctly and failed by one question.
“In the process of manually re-checking the candidates result file, we discovered that a single question had been marked as ‘incorrect’ even though the candidate had selected the ‘correct’ answer,” said the statement.
Randomly selected
Following an “extensive review” of all 1,250 questions on the driver theory test (from which 40 are randomly selected for each test), it was established that the issue related to just one question in the database.
“Each affected person is being contacted by phone and advised they have passed and arrangements are being made to make necessary refunds,” continued the statement. “The initial exam results will be amended to reflect the correct score for all candidates.
“We have successfully contacted almost 100 per cent of the affected candidates and less than 100 remain uncontacted. Further attempts will be made and we hope to reach remaining individuals by close of business November 23rd.
“The Road Safety Authority and Prometric Ireland (who deliver the theory test on behalf of the RSA) regret the error that arose and apologise to the affected candidates. Furthermore we wish to reassure the public that the issue has been rectified.”
