England’s driving test system has become a digital endurance event – complete with 6 a.m. queues, thousands of hopefuls, and bots that beat you to the punch.
Trying to book a driving test in England has become, quite frankly, an exercise in futility. I say this from experience: I’ve spent weeks trying to secure a test date for my daughter, and what should be a simple administrative task has instead turned into a Kafkaesque ordeal. The problem isn’t just long wait times – though those are bad enough – it’s the sheer dysfunction of the booking system itself.
Let’s start with the waiting list. In most parts of the country, the average wait for a practical driving test is around six months. Six months. That means a young driver, who has likely been preparing, practising, and paying for lessons for weeks or months already, must now wait half a year just to try to get their licence. In the meantime, they either continue paying for expensive weekly lessons to “stay sharp,” or they stop and risk getting rusty before their test date finally arrives. Neither option is fair or efficient.
But it’s not just the delay, it’s the process itself that feels broken. The only way to book a driving test is through the official DVSA website, and this is where things get truly maddening. Once you’re on the site, you’re presented with a list of test centres. You click on one, and… nothing. No available dates. You try another. Nothing. Then another. Still nothing.
The DVSA does release cancellations, but only at very specific times. Monday mornings at 6 a.m. is one of those moments, and so, like thousands of others, I dutifully logged on early, hopeful that I might finally snag a slot. What I found instead was a virtual queue with roughly 11,000 people ahead of me. By the time you’re finally admitted, you’re essentially back to square one: staring at test centres with no availability, refreshing the page again and again in desperate hope that something opens up. And of course, if you refresh too often, the system decides you’re a bot and boots you out entirely.
That’s exactly what happened to me. After countless attempts to book a test, I was flagged as an automated system and locked out from the DVSA site altogether. My only workaround was to open a private, incognito browser window – a trick that feels absurdly out of place when all you’re trying to do is book a government service.
And even when you finally manage to secure a test, it’s often months away. I was able to get one, but only six months out. A small victory after a ridiculous amount of time and frustration.
The DVSA continues to point to the COVID-19 pandemic as the root of the problem, citing the backlog created when testing was paused. That explanation may have held water in 2021, but it’s hard to accept in 2025. Every country faced similar disruptions, yet somehow, other nations have recovered their systems. The UK, meanwhile, seems trapped in a state of perpetual backlog and digital chaos.
What makes this all the more frustrating is that learning to drive isn’t some optional pastime; for many people, it’s a necessity. Whether for work, family, or independence, the ability to drive is integral to everyday life. To have such a crucial system so poorly managed feels inexcusable.
The solutions aren’t even that complicated. The DVSA could implement a transparent digital queueing system, rather than relying on frantic refreshing. It could introduce cancellation alerts, or structured release windows that actually work. Even a simple redesign of the booking portal to prevent false “bot” detection would go a long way.
Until then, though, learners and parents are stuck in the same loop: logging in before dawn, queuing behind thousands, refreshing endlessly, and praying the system doesn’t lock them out. It’s bureaucracy at its most maddening. And it leaves you wondering how something so ordinary has become so needlessly difficult.