What to do if you stall, and how a stall is marked on your test

Quick answer

• A manual car stalls when the clutch connects the engine to the wheels without enough power to keep it turning - usually the clutch came up too quickly, or the car slowed too much for the gear.
• To restart: hold the car on the footbrake, put the handbrake on, select neutral, start the engine, then do your move-off checks again before you go.
• On the test a stall is not an automatic fail. DVSA's own guidance uses a stall as an example of a driving fault.
• What makes it serious is what happens around it - such as restarting in gear at a junction so the car moves into the road - or stalling again and again.

Everyone who learns in a manual stalls. The stall itself is rarely the problem. The risk is in the few seconds after it, when you are rushing to get going again with traffic waiting.

Why cars stall

• The clutch comes up too quickly or too far, past the biting point, before there is enough power to move the car.
• Your left foot moves once you have found the biting point. Small, unnecessary movements are what cause the stall or the lurch, not the first find.
• Too little gas for the job, especially uphill, where the engine is working against the slope as well.
• Slowing down to a stop without pressing the clutch. This is DVSA's own example of a stall: braking correctly to pull up on the left, but not pushing the clutch down before the car stopped.
• Too high a gear for your speed, such as trying to pull away in third instead of first.

How to restart safely

DVSA's guidance is that the handbrake is on and the gear lever is in neutral before the engine is started. The rest of this sequence is how I teach it.

1. 01

   Footbrake

   Stop the car moving. On a slope this is the urgent part, because once the engine has stopped there is nothing holding the car.

2. 02

   Handbrake on

   So the car is held without your feet, and you can think about the next step rather than about rolling.

3. 03

   Neutral

   Take it out of gear before you restart. Starting the engine in gear with the clutch up makes the car jump - DVSA's examples of faults after a stall at a junction are both about exactly this.

4. 04

   Start the engine

   Many modern cars will only start with the clutch pressed down, so press it as you turn the key or push the start button.

5. 05

   Get ready to move again

   First gear, find the biting point, and add a little gas - a touch more than last time if you are on a hill. Then hold your left foot still.

6. 06

   Do your checks again

   Mirrors, blind spots, a signal if it would help someone, and a final look round, as rule 159 of the Highway Code sets out. The road has changed since your last look, and this is the step people skip in the rush.

7. 07

   Move off only when it is safe

   Release the handbrake and pull away smoothly. Not faster because someone is waiting behind you.

Stalling at a junction or roundabout

This is where a stall is most likely, because you are pulling into a gap with traffic around you. Restart in exactly the same order, then treat the gap as gone. The traffic you judged before the stall has moved, so look again, properly, before you go - whether you stalled at a give-way line, at traffic lights or on the roundabout itself.

DVSA's examiner guidance (DT1) uses this exact situation to show how a stall is graded. After stalling at a road junction, applying the handbrake but trying to start the engine while still in gear is its example of a driving fault. Starting the engine in gear so that the car moves into the new road, with potential risk to other road users, is its example of a serious one.

Stalling on a hill

Get your foot on the footbrake straight away, because the car can start to roll back as soon as the engine cuts out. Then handbrake on, neutral, restart, and do the hill start again from the biting point with a little more gas. Rolling backwards when moving off is recorded as a fault in its own right, separately from the stall, so holding the car still matters more than restarting quickly.

How a stall is marked on your test

No rule says a stall fails the test. DT1 says the weight of any fault depends on how far it strays from what was expected and on the circumstances at the time, and can range from 'not worthy of recording' to dangerous. GOV.UK puts it more simply: you can carry on if you make a mistake, and it might not affect your result if it is not serious.

DT1's worked example of how examiners record a fault is itself a stall: a learner pulls up on the left, brakes correctly, but does not push the clutch down before stopping, and the car stalls. Under the circumstances described, DT1 assesses that as a driving fault, recorded under the clutch.

Two things change that. The first is effect: a serious fault is one that is potentially dangerous, and a dangerous fault involves actual danger, so a stall is judged by what it led to - as in the junction example above. The second is repetition. GOV.UK's result guide lists repeatedly stalling when moving off throughout the test among the common move-off faults, and DT1 says a driving fault repeated habitually can be assessed as potentially dangerous, which makes it serious.