The objective of CIECA’s road safety charter commitment was to harmonise the criteria used by the driving examiner to assess whether or not the driving test candidate possesses the necessary competencies to drive safely, in other words whether or not the candidate should pass or fail. In this regard, the objective was only met to a small extent. CIECA’s Berlin workshop on ‘Harmonising the Assessment Criteria of (Driving Test) Candidates’ (December 2003) identified “two competing philosophies” when it comes to assessing candidates during the driving test: “ The first, traditional, approach is a mistakes-based system (such as in the UK) where candidates start with full marks and are marked down according to the mistakes they make. The other approach is a competence-based system (such as in Sweden) which focuses on strengths and a global appreciation of the candidates’ driving ability, rather than his faults. The countries represented at the workshop appear[ed] to be aligned, to varying degrees, with either the mistakes-based or the competence-based system”. Competence-based systems also take into account driving faults or errors, but generally not to the same level of detail as in countries with more mistakes-based systems. For instance, there are no fault categories used in the Netherlands, whereas Belgium has 4 fault categories, Germany has 3 fault categories and Finland has 2. Countries with competence-based systems are reluctant to create (written) fault categories for specific driving errors for several reasons: * every driving situation is different and pre-prescribed fault categories are insensitive to this; * fault categories encourage examiners to look for faults rather than to look for competencies, and * test candidates are encouraged — during training and the test itself — to avoid making mistakes, rather than to develop or demonstrate their general safe driving competencies. Several attempts were made throughout the work of CIECA’s road safety charter working group to develop a greater understanding of each country’s assessment systems and to seek a compromise in order to harmonise the assessment criteria from one country to another. Working group members submitted papers on (a) the assessment philosophy used in their countries, (b) the pass-and-fail criteria and (c) argumentation papers on their preferred fault-classification system. The underlying source of tension was, once again, the difference between assessment systems on the competence-based / mistakes-based spectrum. A compromise based on a new set of fault categories ultimately failed. A decision was then made to draft both the ‘competencies required to pass the driving test’ AND the ‘lack of competencies’ (rather than specific errors or error-combinations) leading to failure. A top-down approach was used, thereby outlining general competencies and lack of competencies before going into ever increasing detail. This identification of safe driving competencies can be seen as a promising first step in working towards agreed assessment criteria. Future work could also focus on how driver training and testing can work together to integrate levels 3 and 4 of the GDE matrix (Goals for Driver Education). (Author/publisher)
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