What Are The Most Common Mistakes On The Driving Test
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01
Forgetting the seat belt is a critical error and can end the test before it starts
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02
Rolling through a stop is one of the fastest ways to fail
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03
Both speeding and driving too slowly cost points during the test
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04
Consistent mirror checks show awareness and prevent common test failures
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05
Maintaining safe following distance reduces risk and prevents point deductions
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10 Most Common Mistakes You Should Avoid On A Driving Exam
Before you grab that driver's license, there's one last hurdle: the DMV driving test. If you're a teen getting ready to take it, take a breath. You're not the first person to feel nervous about this, and you won't be the last. If you're a parent reading this to help your teen prepare, welcome too. A lot of what trips up test-takers is fixable with a little practice and a calm run-through of what to expect.
We here at Konnect GPS know that some common mistakes trip up even the best-prepared test-takers. So in this guide, we'll walk through the 10 most common mistakes and how to avoid them. By the end, you'll both know exactly what to expect and feel ready to head into test day with confidence.
Critical driving error
Examiners score two different ways. Most mistakes cost you a point or two, and you can accumulate a certain number before you fail. A critical driving error is different: one is enough to end the test on the spot, regardless of how well everything else went. Forgetting a seat belt, rolling a stop sign, or forcing the examiner to grab the wheel all land in that second category, which is why the first few mistakes on this list matter far more than the rest.
For parents: use this as a practice-drive checklist
Rather than reviewing all 10 points in one sitting, work through two or three per practice drive so it doesn't feel like a lecture. Staying calm and encouraging in the passenger seat goes a long way, because a nervous parent tends to produce a more nervous driver. If your teen gets something wrong, treat it as something to practice next time rather than a big deal.
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What Are The Most Common Mistakes On The Driving Test: The Top 10
1. Not Fastening The Seat Belt
This is the single most avoidable failure on the list, and it happens more often than you'd think. A nervous test-taker slides into the driver's seat, the examiner is already sitting there with a clipboard, and the ordinary habit of reaching for the belt gets skipped entirely. In most states the examiner will not remind you. They will note it, and on many scoring sheets that's a critical error before the car has even moved.
The reason it's scored so harshly is that the belt is the single biggest survivability factor in a crash. Seat belt use also cuts the risk of moderate-to-critical injury to front-seat car occupants in half. An examiner watching a new driver skip that step is watching someone who hasn't yet built the habit that matters most.
Lower risk of fatal injury for front-seat car occupants wearing a seat belt.
Where it goes wrong
- Nerves override an automatic habit
- The examiner won't prompt you
- Buckling late still counts against you
How to get it right
- Belt on before the key, every single drive
- Check the examiner is belted too
- Make it step one of a fixed pre-drive routine
Parent tip
Make buckling up the very first thing your teen does before starting the car on every practice drive, no exceptions. If it becomes automatic at home, it won't be something they have to remember on test day.
2. Making Incomplete Stops
A rolling stop is the mistake almost everyone makes without realizing it. You slow to walking pace, the road is clear, and you ease through. In everyday driving nobody notices. On a driving test the examiner is watching for one specific thing: does the car actually stop moving? Not slow down, not creep. Stop. Rolling through a stop sign is illegal in every state, and on most scoring sheets it's a critical error rather than a point deduction.
The other half of this mistake is stopping in the wrong place. You have to stop before the limit line, and if there isn't one, before the crosswalk. Stopping past the line and then edging forward to see counts as two errors instead of none. The fix is to treat the first stop as the real one and use a second, slower creep only if a parked car or hedge genuinely blocks your view.
Where it goes wrong
- Slowing to a crawl instead of stopping
- Stopping past the limit line or crosswalk
- Rolling right turns on red
How to get it right
- Count to three once the car is still
- Stop at the line first, then creep only if the view is blocked
- Look left, right, then left again before moving
3. Driving Too Fast
Nerves make feet heavier. Plenty of first-time test-takers drift five or eight miles per hour over without noticing, usually on a straight stretch just after a turn goes well and they relax. The examiner notices. Speeding is one of the mistakes most likely to cost repeated points across a single test, because once your baseline speed is high it stays high for the whole route.
Speeding is also the habit with the most at stake once the license is real. NHTSA recorded 11,288 speeding-related deaths in 2024, and speed has been a factor in roughly a third of all traffic deaths for more than two decades. Habits set during practice drives tend to be the ones that hold once nobody is watching.
Of all US traffic deaths in 2024 were speeding-related, killing 11,288 people.
Source: NHTSA, Speeding 2024 data
Where it goes wrong
- Adrenaline quietly raises your baseline speed
- Missing a limit change on an unfamiliar route
- Going too fast for rain or a school zone even at the posted limit
How to get it right
- Glance at the speedometer every few seconds, not every few minutes
- Say the new limit out loud when you pass a sign
- Sit two or three under the limit rather than right on it
4. Driving Too Slowly
Overcorrecting is the natural response to everything above, and it's its own problem. Driving well under the limit reads to an examiner exactly the way it reads to the cars stacking up behind you: this driver is not confident enough to keep up with traffic. Hanging back also creates real risk, because other drivers start making impatient decisions around you, and impatient overtakes are how a cautious driver ends up in someone else's crash.
Hesitation shows up in other places too. Waiting too long at a green light, refusing a gap in traffic that was clearly big enough, and crawling through a turn all cost points for the same underlying reason. The target isn't slow, it's smooth and decisive at a legal speed.
Where it goes wrong
- Overcorrecting after worrying about speeding
- Traffic backing up behind you
- Hesitating at green lights and clear gaps
How to get it right
- Match the flow of traffic, within the limit
- Commit to a decision once you've made it
- Practice merging until gaps stop feeling small
5. Improper Braking
Braking is the clearest window an examiner has into how far ahead you're looking. A driver who reads the road early lifts off, coasts, and brakes gently. A driver watching only the car directly in front brakes late and hard. The car ends up in the same place either way, but only one of those two looks like someone ready for a license.
Hard stops also make the examiner's own ride uncomfortable, and an uncomfortable examiner is a more attentive one. The California DMV asks for smooth, gradual braking, and a good self-check is whether your passenger's head nods forward at the end of the stop. If it does, you braked too late.
Where it goes wrong
- Braking late because you're looking too close ahead
- Holding full pressure right to the stop, so the car lurches
- Riding the brake down a hill instead of easing off the gas
How to get it right
- Start braking earlier than feels necessary
- Gentle pressure first, more only if you need it
- Ease off just before the car stops to kill the lurch
- Look further up the road so stops stop surprising you
Smooth braking technique also extends the life of your brakes, which is a nice side effect for whoever is paying for the pads.
6. Improper Parallel Parking
Parallel parking is the manoeuvre teens dread most, and it's the one examiners are most forgiving about. They aren't expecting a single clean sweep into the space. They're checking whether you can control the car at low speed, whether you look where you're going while reversing, and whether you end up a reasonable distance from the curb. Taking a second attempt is usually fine. Hitting the curb hard, or reversing without turning to look, usually isn't.
Some states won't pass you without it at all, so it's worth confirming what your DMV requires before test day rather than discovering it in the moment. The skill itself is pure repetition. Nobody talks their way to being good at parallel parking.
Where it goes wrong
- Reversing using mirrors only, without turning to look
- Finishing too far from the curb
- Rushing it because you feel watched
How to get it right
- Go slowly; there is no time limit
- Turn your head and check over your shoulder while reversing
- Take the correction rather than living with a bad angle
- Check whether your state requires it before test day
Parent tip
An empty parking lot and a few orange cones, or even a couple of water bottles, will do more for this one than any amount of explaining. Repetition is the whole technique.
7. Improper Lane Changing
A lane change is a sequence, and examiners score the sequence rather than the result. Mirror, signal, blind spot, move, cancel the signal. Skip a step and it counts even if the change itself was perfectly safe, because the examiner has no way to know you checked unless they see you check. That last part surprises people: an over-obvious head turn is better than a subtle one on a test.
The most common failure here is signalling and moving in the same motion, which gives nobody behind you time to react. Signal first, let it blink a few times, then go. The second most common is forgetting to cancel the signal afterward, which leaves you driving down the road telling everyone you're about to turn.
Where it goes wrong
- Signalling and moving at the same moment
- Checking the blind spot so subtly the examiner can't see it
- Leaving the signal on afterward
- Drifting across rather than making a clear move
How to get it right
- Mirror, signal, blind spot, move, cancel
- Let the signal blink three or four times first
- Turn your head far enough that it's visible
- Hold your speed steady through the change
8. Following Too Closely
Following distance is scored continuously rather than at a single moment, which makes it one of the biggest sources of quiet point loss on a test. New drivers tend to sit closer than they realize, partly because a gap that feels enormous from the driver's seat is often only a second and a half of actual reaction time.
The three-second rule is the fix, and it's easy to measure. Pick a fixed object ahead, a sign or a shadow across the road. When the car in front passes it, count. If you reach it before three, you're too close. Double the count in rain and add more in fog or at night. Rear-end collisions make up a large share of crashes on US roads, and following too closely is the reason for most of them.
Where it goes wrong
- A gap that feels big is usually under two seconds
- Closing up in slow traffic without noticing
- Keeping the same gap in rain as on a dry road
How to get it right
- Count three seconds off a fixed object ahead
- Double it in rain, more at night or in fog
- Recheck the gap every time traffic changes speed
- If someone cuts in, drop back rather than closing up
9. Not Checking Mirrors
Mirror checks are the one part of the test where the examiner is grading something they can only see indirectly. They're watching your eyes and your head. A driver who scans left mirror, rearview, right mirror on a loop reads as aware. A driver whose eyes never leave the windshield reads as someone driving on hope, even if nothing goes wrong on the route.
The habit matters far beyond the test, because mirrors are how you know what your options are. If you have to brake hard and you already know there's nobody behind you, that's a completely different decision from braking hard blind. Build the scan now and it becomes free later.
Where it goes wrong
- Eyes locked on the windshield the whole route
- Mirrors adjusted wrong, so they show the car's own sides
- Checking only when about to turn
How to get it right
- Left mirror, rearview, right mirror, on a loop
- Glance every 5 to 10 seconds, more in heavy traffic
- Set the mirrors before you start moving
- Add a shoulder check for anything the mirrors miss
10. Confusion At Four-Way Stops
Four-way stops are less about the rule than about how long you take to apply it. A long, uncertain pause with the examiner watching says you don't know whose turn it is, and that costs points even if you eventually go at the right moment. Hesitation also confuses everyone else at the intersection, which is how two cars end up creeping forward at once.
The rule itself is short. First to arrive goes first. If two cars arrive together, the one on the right goes first. If you genuinely can't tell who arrived first, make eye contact, wave the other driver through, and move on. Being decisive and slightly wrong scores better than being right after ten seconds of stalling.
Where it goes wrong
- Long hesitation that reads as not knowing the rule
- Creeping forward at the same time as another car
- Waving someone through when it isn't safe for them to go
How to get it right
- First to arrive goes first
- Arriving together, the car on the right goes
- Make eye contact to confirm intentions
- Decide and commit rather than stalling
Almost nobody fails on the hard stuff. They fail on the seat belt, the rolling stop, or driving so carefully they hold up traffic.
After The Test: The Year That Actually Matters
Passing the test proves a teen can drive well for twenty minutes with somebody watching. What it can't prove is what happens on the drive home from a friend's house at eleven at night, and crash risk is highest in the first year of licensed driving, before judgment catches up with the skills. The crash data backs that up in the bluntest possible way.
Of male drivers aged 15 to 20 in fatal crashes in 2024 were speeding at the time, the highest share of any age group on the road.
Source: NHTSA, Speeding 2024 data
That's the gap a tracker fills. A plug-in device reports speed, location and every trip taken, so the conversation about driving habits is based on what actually happened rather than on what either of you remembers.
Tell your teen the tracker is there
A device the driver knows about records exactly the same data as a hidden one, so there's nothing to gain by keeping it secret and a lot of trust to lose. Teens who know the rules up front argue about them far less later, and the safety benefit comes from the conversation the tracker starts rather than from catching anyone out.
Discover how fast your teen is really driving
Konnect's Teen Driving Monitor plugs into the OBD2 port in seconds and sends real-time speed and location alerts to your phone, updating every 3 seconds. $39.95 for the device with an $8.95 unlimited plan, or $199 once with no monthly fee at all. Lifetime manufacturer's warranty either way.
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