How many minors can you get on a driving test?

Quick answer

• You can pass a car driving test with up to 15 driving faults, often called minors, as long as none of your faults is serious or dangerous.
• One serious or dangerous fault (a major) is a fail, however few minors you have. So is a sixteenth minor.
• Almost every pass has faults on it. In 2025/26 only 5.7% of first-attempt passes at the test centres DVSA publishes had no faults at all.
• The one to watch is a habit. GOV.UK says a driving fault 'could become a serious fault' if you keep making it.
• DVSA publishes the areas the examiner marks, with examples of faults in each. Some are below.

Fifteen is the number everyone knows, and it does the least to help you drive well. It tells you how many small mistakes you can survive. It says nothing about the one mistake that counts for more than all of them put together.

The three kinds of fault

GOV.UK defines them in a line each, and the difference between them decides your result:

• A driving fault (a minor) is 'not potentially dangerous, but if you keep making the same fault, it could become a serious fault'.
• A serious fault is 'something potentially dangerous'.
• A dangerous fault 'involves actual danger to you, the examiner, the public or property'.

Serious and dangerous faults are the majors. You can have up to 15 driving faults and still pass, but you cannot have any serious or dangerous fault. DVSA's examiner guidance puts the other side plainly: sixteen or more driving faults fail the test.

That guidance also adds a detail GOV.UK's page leaves out. A serious fault is one that is 'potentially dangerous or entails a breach of the law'. It does not have to cause any trouble to count: it only has to have been potentially dangerous, or against the law.

The same action can land in different categories

What separates a minor from a major is not the type of mistake but what it did and how well you dealt with it. DVSA's examiner guidance gives a clean pair of examples from the emergency stop. Locking the wheels and skidding a short distance, while showing skill in regaining control, is its example of a driving fault. Very harsh braking that locks the wheels, leaves the car skidding out of control and brings little or no effective attempt to recover is its example of a serious fault.

Stalling shows why you cannot read a category off a list. DVSA's page for candidates gives repeatedly stalling as an example of a fault when moving off, but it does not say which category that example falls into.

Repeating a minor is how it becomes a major

The risk a count of minors hides is repetition. DVSA's examiner guidance says a driving fault repeated by habit throughout the test can be assessed as potentially dangerous, and its example is a candidate who habitually fails to take mirror observation when appropriate. That is GOV.UK's 'could become a serious fault' in practice.

So a habit matters more than a count. If your instructor keeps pointing out the same thing, it is the first thing to fix before the test.

Most passes have faults on them

A clean sheet is rare. DVSA's figures for 2025/26, April 2025 to March 2026, show 494,370 first-attempt passes at the test centres it publishes, and 28,402 of them had no faults at all. That is 5.7%. The other 94.3% passed with at least one fault recorded.

Two limits on that figure. It counts first attempts only, and it covers the centres where DVSA publishes centre-level data, which leaves out centres where a single examiner conducted the tests.

Analysis by Driving Mastery using official Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency data, published under the Open Government Licence v3.0. DVSA does not endorse this analysis.

The point is not to aim for a spotless sheet. A drive with a few minors on it is a normal pass.

What the examiner marks

DVSA's page for candidates sets out the areas the examiner marks, with examples of faults under each. It does not say which category each example falls into. A selection:

• Control: over-steering on a turn and mounting the pavement, coasting with the clutch held down, braking too hard or not hard enough.
• Move off: rolling back, not checking blind spots properly, repeatedly stalling.
• Use of mirrors: checking them after, or at the same time as, signalling, rather than before.
• Signals: signalling too late to be effective, or signalling without turning.
• Junctions (including roundabouts): misjudging an oncoming vehicle's speed so that it has to slow as you emerge, or not checking for other road users when joining a dual carriageway from a slip road.
• Awareness and planning: not anticipating cyclists and other vulnerable road users, or that pedestrians may step onto the road.
• Following at a safe distance: driving too close to the vehicle in front, or not allowing more room in rain, ice or fog.
• Positioning: straddling lanes, or staying in the right-hand lane of a dual carriageway for longer than necessary.
• Progress: driving unnecessarily slowly, or waiting when another road user has already given way.
• Response to signs and signals: reacting late to a speed limit sign, or not stopping at a compulsory stop sign.
• Ancillary controls: not using the wipers when rain starts, or the demisters when you need them.
• Reverse park: needing to reposition the car often because of poor control, or touching or driving over the pavement.

Two things on that list are worth noticing. Being too slow is a fault, and so is waiting when you do not need to. And several of the examples are habits you can see from the driver's seat, such as looking in the mirror at the same moment as you signal instead of before.

When the examiner steps in

Occasionally the examiner has to act. DVSA's examiner guidance describes advice, given when a fault is seen and there is no immediate danger, and 'action', verbal or physical, when immediate intervention is needed to stop a situation turning dangerous. If it happened on your test, your result shows 'examiner took action'. The same guidance says a fault assessed as dangerous is marked as dangerous whatever action the examiner took.

What to do with this before your test

1. 01

   Ask for the category, not just the count

   After a lesson, ask your instructor whether each fault would have been a minor or a major, and why. 'Potentially dangerous' is a judgement, and hearing it applied to your own driving is the quickest way to learn where the line is.

2. 02

   Fix the habit before the one-off

   A single slip is a mark on the sheet. The thing you do every time is the thing that can turn into a serious fault, and DVSA's own example is mirror observation.

3. 03

   Do not keep a running total

   A minor you are brooding over costs you attention at the next junction. Keep your eyes on the road ahead, not on a count.

4. 04

   Drive it out

   Everything after a mistake still counts, so keep driving properly to the end.