Your First Motorway Drive

After you pass · 9 min read · Updated 1 September 2026

The practical test does not go near a motorway, and learners have only been allowed on one since 4 June 2018, with an instructor, in a dual-control car. Almost nobody takes that up. So the first motorway most British drivers ever drive, they drive alone. This is what the test left out, and where East London's nearest one starts.

There is a gap in British driver training that everyone knows about and almost nobody fixes. The practical test does not use motorways.

An examiner will put you on a dual carriageway if the route has one, and that is as close as it gets. Then you pass, and the following week you are entitled to join the M11 at 70 miles an hour with no training and nobody beside you.

Since 4 June 2018, learners in England, Scotland and Wales have been allowed on motorways, but only with an approved driving instructor, in a dual-control car showing L plates. Cars only, and trainee instructors do not count. It is entirely voluntary and it is not tested, so in practice very few learners do it. The scheme fixed the legality and left the incentive alone.

Where East London's Motorway Starts

There is no motorway inside East London. The nearest is the M11, and junction 4 at Woodford is the access nearly everyone here uses. It sits on Charlie Brown's Roundabout, where the A406 North Circular and the A104 meet the start of the motorway, and the carriageway runs north past Loughton and Epping.

Getting there is half the job. The A12 through Leyton and Leytonstone, and the A406 east from Waterworks Corner, are multi-lane roads with slip roads where the limit steps up in stages rather than jumping straight to 70. That is where joining and lane changing are best learned, at the speeds those stages allow. For Barking and Newham the A13 does the same work.

South of the river it is different again: the A2 out through Kidbrooke and Bexley towards the M25 at Dartford, which is a longer run before the first genuinely fast mile.

Joining: The Slip Road Is For Getting Up To Speed

The single most common mistake is treating the slip road as a queue rather than a runway. Drivers arrive at the end of it at 45, then try to merge into traffic doing 65 or 70, which forces someone else to brake and puts the joining car in the worst possible position.

The Highway Code is direct about it. Rule 259 says to give priority to traffic already on the motorway, and to match your speed to fit safely into the flow in the left-hand lane. Both halves matter, and the second half is the one people skip.

What that looks like in practice:

1. Look right early, while you are still on the slip road, and find the gap you intend to use rather than waiting to be given one
2. Use the whole slip road to build speed, so you arrive alongside the traffic doing roughly what it is doing
3. Mirror, signal, blind spot, then move in one decision rather than drifting across while you think
4. Stay in the left lane long enough to settle before you consider overtaking anything

An automatic helps here more than people expect. On a short slip road with a lorry closing in lane one, there is no gear change to make and nothing to stall. The A12 slip roads near Gants Hill are short enough that this is a real difference rather than a talking point.

Lane Discipline Is A Rule, Not A Preference

Keep in the left lane unless overtaking, and return to the left once you are past. That is rule 264, and it is the rule most habitually broken on the M11 on any given morning.

Sitting in the middle lane feels safer to a nervous driver because it removes the need to change lanes at all. What it actually does is compress everyone else into two lanes and generate the undertaking and the aggressive overtakes that make a motorway feel dangerous. Lane two is a place you visit, not a place you live.

The right-hand lane is for overtaking. Vehicles towing trailers and most heavy goods vehicles are not permitted to use it at all, which is worth knowing before you find yourself boxed behind two lorries at 56 miles an hour and wondering why the outside lane is empty.

Gaps: Two Seconds, Doubled In The Wet

At 70 miles an hour you cover a lot of ground in the time it takes to notice something. Rule 126 asks for at least a two second gap on high speed roads, at least doubled on wet roads and up to ten times greater on ice.

Two seconds is easy to measure and worth actually doing rather than estimating. Pick a fixed point ahead, a sign or a bridge, and count as the car in front passes it. If you reach it before you finish saying the phrase, you are too close.

The gap is also what makes everything else easy. With four seconds in front of you, a lorry pulling out is an inconvenience. With one, it is an emergency.

Gantries, Variable Limits And The Red X

Overhead gantries carry information you are expected to act on immediately, and the habit to build is looking far enough ahead to read them with time to respond rather than time to react.

A variable speed limit shown in a red ring is a legal limit, not advice, and it is usually there because of something you cannot see yet: queuing traffic, an incident, or debris.

A red X over a lane means that lane is closed. Not busy, not slow: closed. Rule 258 of the Highway Code says you must not drive in a closed lane, and cameras on motorways are set up to detect vehicles passing under one.

The reason for the closure is normally ahead of you and out of sight, which might be a stopped vehicle in a live lane or the emergency services working in it. Move out in good time when you see the advance signs, rather than running to the end of the lane and forcing your way across.

Smart Motorways, And Breaking Down With No Hard Shoulder

On stretches with all lane running, the hard shoulder is a running lane and the emergency areas do its old job. They are marked with blue signs carrying an orange SOS symbol, and rule 270 is clear that they must only be used in an emergency.

The thing to rehearse in your head, once, is what you do if the car fails where there is no hard shoulder.

• Get left as early as you can, while the car is still moving
• Reach an emergency area if the car will carry you that far
• If it will not, get as far left as possible and put the hazards on
• Leave through the left-hand doors, everybody, and get behind the barrier
• Use the orange SOS phone, which tells the control room exactly which stretch you are on
• Do not attempt any repair, and do not stand between the car and the traffic

None of that is complicated. It is just difficult to invent under pressure at the roadside for the first time, which is the argument for having read it before rather than after.

Coming Off, And Knowing When You Are Tired

Leave early rather than late. Countdown markers at 300, 200 and 100 yards give you the distance to the exit, and the lane change should be finished before the first of them, not started at the last.

Slow on the slip road rather than on the carriageway, and check your speed at the end of it, because 40 feels like walking pace after an hour at 70 and the roundabout at the top will not forgive it.

Fatigue is the other thing a 35 minute test cannot teach. A motorway is monotonous in a way city driving is not, and the tiredness arrives without much warning. Plan the stop before you need it rather than deciding at the moment you notice.

Should You Buy A Motorway Lesson

Sometimes, and not always. It is the right call if you hold a full licence, have never driven a motorway, and would rather meet one with an instructor beside you than alone on a Friday afternoon. It is also right if you used to drive them and stopped, because confidence goes before skill does.

It is the wrong call in three cases. If you are a learner still working on roundabouts, motorway hours will not move you closer to a pass, because the test does not cover them.

If you have never driven a dual carriageway, most of a first session would go on the A12 before you reached the M11, so either book knowing that or put an hour of refresher work at £41 in front of it. And if you want the whole post-test syllabus rather than one road type, Pass Plus at £260 includes the motorway hours inside the price.

Standalone motorway lessons are priced on enquiry rather than by the hour, and the reason is the map: from Wanstead you are on the M11 within minutes, from Canada Water you cross the river first. One rate would mean overcharging half of East London.

Whatever you decide, do not let the first motorway be an accident on the way to somewhere important. The rest of the first month has a sensible order too, and it is in what to do in the first month after you pass. If you have not passed yet, the complete guide to learning to drive in East London covers the stages in order.

Motorway questions new drivers ask

More in After you pass

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.