What Is Different About an Automatic Test?

Automatic driving · 10 min read · Updated 1 September 2026

An automatic driving test is the same test. The examiner is the same, the routes out of your centre are the same, the marking sheet is the same and you still pass with no more than 15 driving faults and no serious or dangerous fault. Two things genuinely differ: a set of clutch faults is off the table, and the licence you get afterwards carries code 78.

The most useful thing to know about an automatic driving test is how little of it is different. People arrive expecting a list, and the honest list has two items on it. Treating it as a different exam is the mistake this page exists to prevent.

The Test, Element By Element

A car test lasts around 35 minutes and runs in a fixed order. None of it changes for an automatic.

What the table is really saying is that the test belongs to the centre and the examiner rather than to the car. A test out of Wanstead is a Wanstead test whether you arrive in a manual hatchback or an electric saloon.

The reversing manoeuvre is drawn from the same three in both cars: parallel park at the roadside, bay park either in or out, or pull up on the right, reverse about two car lengths and rejoin.

The examiner chooses on the day, and the automatic makes none of them shorter, though bay parking at walking pace on the footbrake alone is easier to control than the same manoeuvre balanced on a clutch. The observation requirements are unchanged. All three are described in the driving test manoeuvres explained.

Difference One: A Category Of Fault Disappears

This is the real difference and it is worth being precise about its size. On the marking sheet, a set of related control faults simply cannot be recorded against you.

• Stalling, because there is nothing to stall
• Clutch control faults, including riding it and coasting on it
• Gear selection faults, since the car chooses
• Rolling back on a hill start, in almost all cases, because the footbrake does the whole job

That is a meaningful subtraction, particularly at Chingford, where the gradients on Friday Hill and Kings Head Hill make rolling back one of the faults that most often ends a test. It is also narrower than the phrase "easier test" implies, because none of the faults that most commonly fail candidates are on the list.

Difference Two: The Licence Afterwards

Pass in an automatic and you get category B with code 78, restricted to vehicles with automatic transmission. Pass in a manual and you get category B with no restriction, covering both.

This is the difference that actually persists after test day, and it is the one worth settling before you book rather than afterwards. Nothing that happens in those 35 minutes changes it: the transmission of the car you sit the test in decides the transmission you are licensed for, and no examiner has any discretion over that.

Walking The Test, Stage By Stage

The table above says what is the same. This is what each stage actually involves, and where the transmission does and does not come into it.

Before you get in

You meet the examiner, show your licence and confirm whose car you are using. Then the eyesight check: reading a number plate from 20 metres, about the length of five parked cars, in whatever glasses or lenses you normally wear. Nothing changes for an automatic, and failing it ends the test before it starts.

The tell me question

One question at the car before you drive, from the published set. Some answers depend on the car rather than the gearbox: where the brake fluid reservoir sits, how you would check a tyre, how the parking brake works if it is a switch rather than a lever. Not different, except that an answer rehearsed off a generic list may not match your particular bonnet.

Moving off for the first time

The first place the automatic shows. No biting point to find and nothing to stall, so all of your attention is free to go where the examiner is already looking, which is over your right shoulder. What is not different is the observation. Moving off safely sits third on the DVSA's list of reasons people fail, and it is a mirrors and blind spot fault rather than a clutch fault.

General driving on the centre's routes

The longest part of the test and the least affected by the car. Out of Wanstead: Hollybush Hill, the timed bus lanes on Cambridge Park, the lane choice approaching Charlie Brown's Roundabout.

Out of Goodmayes: Green Lane, Barley Lane and the box junctions on the A118 High Road, where you must not enter the box until your exit road or lane is clear. Out of Chingford: Larkshall Road, the Simmons Lane roundabouts and the gradients on Friday Hill and Kings Head Hill.

Two of those cut differently for automatic candidates. Box junctions are easier to creep into by accident, because the car moves the moment you ease off the brake. Gradients are easier to hold, because holding is the footbrake and nothing else.

The show me question

Asked while you are driving, and answered while you carry on driving safely. Washing the windscreen, demisting the rear screen, sounding the horn. Not different, and what gets marked is not whether you found the control but whether you stayed in charge of the car while looking for it.

The manoeuvre

One of three, chosen by the examiner, and all three are steadier in an automatic because creep gives you a walking-pace crawl governed by brake pressure alone. What is unchanged is that the marks go on observation throughout and on where you finish relative to the kerb or the bay lines.

The emergency stop

Possible rather than certain, and the examiner decides. Braking firmly, in a straight line, without locking the wheels. In a manual you would put the clutch down as the car stopped. In an automatic there is nothing for your left foot to do, which is one more reason to keep it flat on the floor.

Independent driving

Twenty to thirty-five minutes following a sat nav or road signs, entirely unaffected by transmission. A wrong turn is not a fault in itself: the examiner gets you back on route and marks only how you drove while you were off it.

Three Things People Still Expect To Be Different

The examiner is the first. The same examiners test both, there is no automatic specialist and no adjusted standard, and the transmission is noted and then ignored.

The questions are the second. Still one of each, drawn from the published set of 14 "tell me" and 7 "show me" questions, with a couple of answers that depend on the car rather than the gearbox. They are covered in the show me tell me questions.

The queue is the third. Automatic tests are not booked from a separate list, so you are competing for the same slots as everybody else at that centre. London waiting times are long and they move, so check the current position on gov.uk when you book rather than relying on what somebody told you last month.

The Faults Automatic Learners Actually Collect

Removing the clutch does not remove the ways to lose control of the car. Three patterns turn up often enough to be worth naming.

Creep, unmanaged. An automatic in D will move on its own when you release the brake. At a junction, that means the car edges forward while you are still looking right. Examiners see this as a failure to keep the vehicle under control, and at a busy East London junction it can escalate quickly. The fix is the footbrake, held firmly, until you have decided to go.

Speed control on the approach. With no gears to drop into, the car does not slow itself as much when you lift off, so approaches to junctions and roundabouts arrive faster than the learner expects. Approaching too quickly, then braking hard, gathers faults for planning and for control.

Left foot involvement. Some learners drift towards resting the left foot near the brake, or braking with it. Both look wrong and both risk a genuine control fault. The left foot belongs flat on the floor or on the footrest, and nowhere else. That habit, and the rest of the selector, is covered in how an automatic gear selector actually works.

Trusting the car to do the thinking. An automatic chooses its own gears, which leads some learners to assume it is choosing the speed too. Coming down a gradient like Kings Head Hill it will gather speed happily while you wait for something to hold it back. Not driving at a safe and reasonable speed sits in the DVSA's top ten, and no gearbox protects you from it.

The Car You Bring

An automatic test car meets the same DVSA rules for a car used on test as any other: roadworthy, insured for the test, no warning lights, and an extra mirror for the examiner. In your instructor's car that is their problem. In your own, read the rules first, because a car turned away at the door still costs you the fee.

One automatic-specific point does apply here, and it is worth saying because the mistake is irreversible. Whatever car you take the test in decides the licence you get.

A learner who has done most of their hours in a manual and then borrows an automatic for test day because it feels safer walks away with code 78 whether they intended to or not, and the only way back is a second practical test in a manual.

What Happens At The End

Identical again. You park back at the centre, the examiner gives you the result there and then and goes through the sheet fault by fault, so you know what was recorded and where.

If you have passed, the examiner will offer to send your licence off so the full one arrives by post, and you may drive away unaccompanied provided the car is insured for you to do so.

If you have not, the sheet is the useful part of the day: it names the fault that ended it and counts the rest, and most candidates who read it properly find a familiar story rather than a surprise. Book again while the detail is fresh. The only automatic-specific note is the licence itself, which arrives with code 78 on it.

How To Prepare, Given All That

Since the test is the same, the preparation is the same. Hours on the routes your centre actually uses, deliberate practice on observation at junctions, and one honest rehearsal before you commit to the real thing.

That last one is the piece people skip. Booking a test because a slot appeared is how most candidates end up paying £62 to find out something an instructor could have told them for less. A mock test run on the real routes and marked on the real sheet answers the readiness question directly.

The broader picture of how the pass rates read for automatic candidates is in is it easier to pass in an automatic, and the full journey is mapped in learning to drive in East London.

Questions about the automatic test

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Published 1 September 2026. Prices and DVSA figures are checked when this page is revised. If anything here has changed, ring us and we will confirm it.