Driving testers who were “nitpicking” and another who reacted poorly to a learner driver forgetting where they parked their car before the test were among complaints received by the Road Safety Authority (RSA) in recent months.
In one case, a person sitting their driving test later complained that their examiner had “scolded” them for “whizzing past cars”, despite the fact they were travelling at the speed limit.
In another complaint, a learner driver said after they cut out three times during a hill start, the tester “proceeded to then shout at me” to work the clutch, which they said made them cry. The learner driver said when they returned to the test centre the examiner said: “So obviously you failed”.
One person complained that before a test in Finglas, Dublin, their tester made a “big deal” of the learner driver forgetting where they had parked their car.
The learner driver said while the theory portion of the test went well, “things began to go downhill” when they left the test centre to start the drive.
“When we stepped outside, the examiner asked me where my car was parked. Due to my nervousness, I forgot the exact location of my car,” they wrote. The person said their tester told them it was a “bad start to the test” and complained that they had made up their mind “to fail me” at that point.
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Complaints made between March and May to the RSA, the State agency running the driving test, were released to The Irish Times following a request under the Freedom of Information Act.
Other complaints included people who felt their examiners were “rude” and “grumpy”, as well as one person who said they were not allowed to sit their test as they were one minute late.
Another learner driver said their tester had been “obnoxious” during the drive and shouted at them twice, which they said “contributed to some of my mistakes”.
Another complainant said they were told to put down the driver side window during the test, despite the “torrential” rain outside. “This caused my right side to get soaked and affected my vision on my right side due to the rain coming in on top of me,” they told the RSA.
One person complained that they were made to attempt a reverse around a corner at the base of a hill, off a busy road. The learner driver said they had to stop the manoeuvre four times to let traffic pass, at which point the tester told them to “just leave it”.
One tester was described as “evil” in another complaint, with the learner driver telling the RSA that they were not surprised the centre where they sat the test had a high fail rate. “I really feel like going to The Irish Times after the way [the driving tester] treated me this morning,” they wrote.
