Woman Fails Driving Test 110 Times
…AND she’s not even got to the practical part yet, where what she’s been told is 6 inches causes problems. This is really quite amazing, this lady has managed to fail the driving theory test 110 times:
A 28-year-old woman has failed her driving theory test a record 110 times, new figures today revealed.
The unnamed learner, from Southwark, south-east London, spent a staggering £3,410 in a bid to show she knows the rules and dangers of the road.
But despite her determination to pass the test, she is yet to do so – and still has her practical driving test to overcome.
The driving theory test, costing £31 a time, comprises multiple-choice questions and a hazard perception exam.
So, the driving test, this theory part of it at least, is 50 questions, all multiple choice. They vary a bit, some ask for more than one answer but you’ve got to get 43 right in order to pass the test. And near 65% of people who take it do pass it. I just doddled through a practice one myself, just to check it, and I passed in 10 minutes and I’ve not even driven a car in England for a decade.
So there’s got to be something pretty seriously wrong if she can’t get through it in 110 tries. And I’m really not sure if we’d want her on the roads if she managed to pass on go 111 either.
But there’s more to it than that. Because after 110 tries you’d actually have expected her to have passed it on a purely random basis. The likelihood (OK, it’s a little more complex, as there are some multiple answer ones) of getting any one answer correct is 0.25 (or getting one wrong, 0.75) and with 50 questions in a row it’s therefore very unlikely that you will pass just by random guessing.
However, you would begin to expect that one in one hundred chance (or whatever it is) to come up after 110 attempts at doing the test. That is, it’s likely that she should have passed the test by now just from random guessing.
Which is pretty scary really. Most of the test you can see immediately what are the wrong answers (you pass an accident, you should immediately accelerate into the wreckage?) and thus raise the success rate of guessing. And to end up doing worse than random chance would lead us to expect means some pretty serious issues with the understanding of what’s happening out there.
Scary stuff if she ever does pass.
Photo: Ada R. Gibson, 81-year-old retired school teacher, makes an Âokay sign and proudly waves her new driverÂs license, March 13, 1958, making her one of the oldest persons ever to take and pass a District of Columbia examination. Unwilling to sit and rock, Mrs. Gibson explained she got a job operating a candy stand in a motion picture theater 10 blocks from her home and needed an automobile to get to work. She bought a car, took the driving lesson and passed her tests. Mrs. Gibson, who retired from teaching 22 years ago, explained she did a bit of auto driving many years ago. (AP Photo/Byron Rollins)
Ref #: PA.12030969
Date: 13/03/1958
Posted: 14th, July 2014 | In: Money, Strange But True Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
