You can collect up to 15 driving faults and still pass. The sixteenth fails you. The part almost nobody knows is that repeating the same driving fault can be escalated to a serious fault, which ends the test long before you reach the count.
Fifteen. You can collect up to 15 driving faults and still pass, and the sixteenth fails you. That is the whole answer to the question in the title, and the rest of this page is about why the number is much less important than it sounds.
The DVSA's pass criteria have two halves: no more than 15 driving faults, and no serious or dangerous faults. Both have to be true. Most candidates who fail do so on the second condition with a fault count nowhere near the limit.
What Counts As A Driving Fault
A driving fault is a mistake that was not potentially dangerous in the circumstances it happened in. Learners call them minors. The examiner marks a tick in one of about two dozen named categories, and that is the extent of it.
- Stalling once at a junction with nothing behind you
- Being a little wide of the kerb after a parallel park
- A signal given slightly late
- A gear or a speed that was fine but not ideal
- Getting a show me or tell me question wrong
- Hesitating a moment too long at a junction that was clear
None of these are failures of safety. They are the ordinary friction of driving, and the allowance of 15 exists because the DVSA is not testing for perfection.
Fifteen Is More Than It Sounds
On a test of around 35 minutes, 15 faults is roughly one every two and a half minutes, sustained for the whole drive. That is a poor drive by most standards, and candidates who are ready to sit a test very rarely produce it.
Which produces the odd situation this page exists to correct. Learners worry about the count and it is almost never what gets them. The count is a generous ceiling on ordinary imperfection. The thing that actually decides the result is whether anything in those 35 minutes was unsafe.
It is worth understanding why the DVSA set the allowance where it did. A test that demanded a flawless drive would be testing something nobody does, including examiners and instructors, and it would fail people for being human on the morning that happened to matter.
The allowance exists so that a candidate who is genuinely safe is not failed for a late signal and a slightly clumsy gear change. It was never intended as a budget to spend.
The Escalation Rule
Here is the part that is not obvious from the pass criteria, and the reason people are sometimes told they failed with only a handful of minors on the sheet.
An examiner can escalate a repeated driving fault to a serious fault. The logic is straightforward. The grade reflects risk, and a mistake made once is a slip while the same mistake made five times is a habit.
A habit will eventually meet the circumstances that make it dangerous, and the examiner is entitled to mark it as what it is rather than wait for the traffic to prove the point.
What escalation looks like in practice
Some examples of the shape it takes:
- You roll back a few inches on the first hill start. Driving fault. You do it at the second, the third and the fourth. By the fourth the examiner is not marking an accident of nerves, they are marking a driver who cannot hold a car on a gradient, which on the hills around Chingford is a real risk.
- You take a slightly short look right before pulling out of the first side road. Driving fault. Six side roads later, with the same short look every time, that is not a lapse. It is how you emerge from junctions.
- You check the interior mirror but not the door mirror before the first lane change. Then before the second. Then the third. The examiner is now watching someone who changes lanes on a partial picture.
There is no fixed number at which escalation happens, and it is not a mechanical rule like a three-strikes count. It is a judgement about whether the repetition has changed what the fault means.
That is uncomfortable, but it is also the right way round: an examiner who had to keep marking minors while watching the same unsafe habit for half an hour would be reporting a number that told you nothing.
Where The Faults Fall Matters More Than How Many
Because of escalation, two candidates with the same fault count can be in completely different positions.
| Sheet | Count | What it actually says |
|---|---|---|
| Six faults across six categories | 6 | An ordinary drive with ordinary friction. Nothing to fix in particular. |
| Six faults all in junction observation | 6 | One habit, marked six times, that was one busier junction away from being a serious fault. |
Illustrative, based on the DVSA marking categories set out at gov.uk/driving-test.
The second candidate passed and should treat it as a warning. The first passed and can forget about it. This is why asking the examiner to walk you through the sheet is worth the two minutes it takes, whatever the result, and it is the same reason a mock test is only useful if you read the sheet afterwards rather than the number at the bottom.
The Categories That Fill Up First
Not all of the two dozen categories are equally likely to collect marks. A handful of them account for most driving faults on most sheets, and they are the same ones that appear at the top of the DVSA's annual failure list.
- Junctions, observation. The single most marked category on the sheet, nationally and locally.
- Mirrors, change of direction. Every parked car you pull around on an East London high street is a change of direction.
- Move off, safely. The blind spot check, repeated many times across a test.
- Positioning, normal driving. Where you sit in the lane when nothing is happening.
- Response to signs, road markings. Box junctions, bus lanes and lane arrows.
If your marks are landing anywhere in that group, they are landing in the categories most likely to be escalated, because those are the ones where the consequence of the habit is a collision rather than an inconvenience. A cluster in "junctions, observation" is a fundamentally more serious sheet than the same number of marks in "control, gears" or "vehicle checks", even though the count is identical.
Is A Pass With Fifteen Minors A Worse Pass?
No, and there is nothing to be gained by pretending otherwise. A pass is a pass. Nothing about the fault count appears on your licence, no insurer sees it, and no future employer can ask the DVSA for it. The certificate you get with 15 minors is the certificate you get with none.
What it does tell you, privately, is that you were closer to the edge than the result suggests, and that a slightly different set of circumstances on the same drive might have produced a different answer. That is worth knowing in your first months on the road, particularly if the faults clustered.
Reducing The Count Is Not The Goal
If your fault count is high, the fix is almost never to concentrate harder on the individual mistakes. It is to find the one or two habits generating most of them.
Most high counts come from a very small number of sources. Late decisions, which produce faults in positioning, lane discipline, signalling and speed all at once. Partial observation, which produces faults at junctions, on lane changes and on moving off. Slow reading of the road ahead, which produces hesitation, harsh braking and awkward gear choices. Fix the source and half a dozen categories clear up together.
What each of the common categories looks like on a real road is in the top ten reasons people fail, and the full grading system is in what the examiner is actually marking. The definitions of the two grades that end a test are in serious and dangerous faults.
If You Do Go Over Fifteen
Sixteen driving faults and no serious fault is a specific and quite useful result. It means nothing you did was unsafe, and that you made a lot of small errors. That is a different problem from a single serious fault, and it usually needs more mileage rather than more instruction.
It is also the rarer of the two failure modes, and it usually says something specific about how you got here: that you can drive safely but have not yet done enough of it for the mechanics to run without your attention.
That is a mileage problem rather than an instruction problem, and it responds to more hours on more varied roads rather than to another explanation of what you already understand.
Either way you wait ten working days before you can sit another test, which is covered in what happens if you fail. Lesson rates for the hours in between are on the pricing page, and the whole route from provisional licence to pass is in the guide to learning to drive in East London.
A mock test is scored on the same sheet, so it gives you a real number rather than an impression of how the drive went.
Book a mock testQuestions about driving faults
How many minors can you get on a driving test?
Fifteen. You pass with up to 15 driving faults provided you have no serious or dangerous fault. Sixteen driving faults is a fail regardless of everything else.
Can you fail with fewer than 15 minors?
Yes, and most people who fail do. One serious or dangerous fault ends the test on its own, even with no other marks on the sheet.
Can repeated minors turn into a major?
Yes. An examiner can escalate a repeated driving fault to a serious fault, because a mistake made once is a slip and the same mistake made repeatedly is a habit. There is no fixed number at which it happens; it is a judgement about what the repetition means.
Does the number of minors go on your licence?
No. Nothing about your fault count is recorded anywhere on your licence or shared with insurers. A pass with 15 driving faults and a pass with none are identical on paper.
Is it better to have faults spread out or in one category?
Spread out. Six faults across six different categories is ordinary. Six faults in the same category is one habit marked six times, and it is the kind of sheet that becomes a fail on a busier day.
A mock test at £50 tells you what your fault count actually is today, and which category they are all falling into.
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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.