A serious fault is something potentially dangerous or a breach of the law. A dangerous fault involved actual danger. Either ends the test, no matter how clean the rest of it was. If the examiner has to speak or touch a control to prevent something, it is recorded as one.
Learners call them majors. The marking sheet does not use that word: it has a column for serious faults and a column for dangerous faults, and a mark in either one ends the test. For the purposes of the result they do the same thing, which is why the single word survives.
The distinction still matters, because it explains the logic examiners apply, and once you see the logic you can predict which situations put you at risk.
The Two Definitions
| Grade | Definition | Typical trigger |
|---|---|---|
| Serious | Potentially dangerous, or a breach of the law | Something that could have caused an incident, but did not on this occasion |
| Dangerous | Involved actual danger to you, the examiner, the public or property | Something that did cause a hazard, or that required somebody else to act |
Definitions as published by the DVSA at gov.uk/driving-test.
The word doing the work in the first definition is "potentially". A serious fault does not need anything to have gone wrong. It needs the situation to have been one where something could have. That is why candidates so often finish a test genuinely believing nothing happened: from inside the car, a potential incident feels identical to an ordinary junction.
The Breach Of Law Half
The second clause in the serious fault definition is easy to skip over and it accounts for a lot of results. A breach of the law is a serious fault whether or not it endangered anybody.
- Crossing a solid white line where you are not permitted to
- Driving in a bus lane during its hours of operation
- Entering a box junction when your exit is not clear
- Passing a red light, including one you were already braking for
- Exceeding the speed limit, particularly in a 20mph zone
- Turning where a sign prohibits it
None of these require a near miss. An empty bus lane at eight in the morning is still a bus lane, and an empty box junction with a blocked exit is still an offence.
This half of the definition is the one that catches otherwise competent drivers, and it is disproportionately relevant in London, where the road rules are denser than almost anywhere else in the country. Box junctions are covered in box junctions explained.
Examiner Intervention Is Always A Major
If the examiner takes the wheel, uses the dual controls, or speaks to prevent something happening, that is recorded as a serious or dangerous fault. There is no version of an intervention that ends up in the minor column.
This includes the verbal ones, which surprise people. A sharp "wait" as you begin to pull out, or "brake", is an intervention. It counts because the only reason the examiner spoke was that the situation would otherwise have developed, and their job during the test is to observe rather than instruct.
The Same Action, Two Different Grades
This is the part that makes majors feel arbitrary and is in fact the most consistent thing about them. The grade reflects the risk created, and the risk depends on what was around you.
- Pulling out of a side road with a short look right. Empty road: driving fault. A cyclist approaching in the primary position: serious fault. Identical steering, identical throttle, different grade.
- Drifting a foot wide on a left bend. Nothing coming: driving fault or nothing at all. An oncoming car: serious.
- Stalling. On a quiet road: a driving fault. Halfway across a junction on the A118 with traffic committed towards you: potentially dangerous, because you have stopped the car somewhere it must not be.
- Hesitating at a roundabout. Once, missing a gap: nothing. Sitting through three clear gaps while a queue builds behind you: an examiner may treat undue hesitation as more than a minor, because it makes other drivers behave unpredictably.
The practical lesson is that you cannot make yourself safe by executing manoeuvres precisely. You make yourself safe by knowing what is around the car, which is the same conclusion the DVSA failure statistics keep arriving at from the other direction.
Where They Come From On East London Roads
The local geography produces a recognisable set.
Junctions with parked cars up to the line
Residential streets across E and IG postcodes are parked solid to the give-way line, so from the stop position you can see almost nothing. The only safe way out is to creep, holding your observation, ready to stop.
The unsafe way, and the one that gets marked, is to take a look from where you cannot see anything, then commit. When something is coming that becomes a serious fault, and on these roads something usually is.
Cycle lanes on main roads
Most main roads here have a cycle lane along the nearside, which puts a cyclist in your blind spot on the majority of left turns. Rule H3 of the Highway Code is explicit that you must not cut across cyclists going ahead when you turn, and doing it is both a breach and a genuine hazard. The hierarchy rules introduced in 2022 are covered in the Highway Code hierarchy of road users.
Box junctions and timed bus lanes
Both are breaches of law rather than judgement calls, which puts them in the serious column automatically. The A118 High Road near Goodmayes has boxes that fill from the far side, so an exit that looked clear when you entered is not clear when you arrive. The rule is about the exit being clear when you enter, so the answer is to hold back and lose ten seconds.
Gradients
Around Chingford, Friday Hill and Kings Head Hill produce rolling back, and rolling back into the car behind you is the clearest dangerous fault available on a test route. In an automatic this is rarer than in a manual but it is not impossible on a steep enough gradient with a slow throttle.
What Happens After One
The test usually continues. Examiners do not stop the car and drive you back unless carrying on would be unsafe, so most candidates who pick up a serious fault complete the full 35 minutes without knowing.
That is deliberate, and it is worth knowing for a practical reason: a moment you are convinced ended your test very often did not, and giving up on the remaining twenty minutes is how one bad moment turns into a genuinely bad drive.
If it did end the test, the marking sheet names the category and the examiner will explain it. That explanation is the single most useful thing you get out of a failed test, and it is worth asking for the detail rather than the headline: which junction, what was coming, and what the safe version would have looked like.
If You Think You Have Got One
Carry on driving, properly, to the end. That is the entire advice, and it is harder to follow than it sounds.
Candidates are unreliable judges of their own sheets in both directions. People walk back into the centre certain they have failed and pass; people walk back convinced it went well and find a serious fault they never noticed, which is the whole point of the word "potentially".
The moment that felt awful, a stall or a stutter at a roundabout, is very often a driving fault or nothing at all. The moment that felt like ordinary driving, creeping out past a parked van while a cyclist was coming, is the one that got marked.
So the belief that you have failed is not information. What it does reliably do is degrade the next twenty minutes, and that is how one marked moment becomes a genuinely poor drive with several more.
If you are wrong about the fault, you have thrown away a pass. If you are right, you have thrown away the only free practice you will ever get on a real test route with an examiner beside you.
How To Give Yourself Fewer Chances To Get One
Majors come from a short list of situations, so the preparation is correspondingly narrow.
- Emerge slowly from restricted junctions, with your head still moving as the car moves
- Assume a cyclist is beside you on every left turn until you have looked and confirmed otherwise
- Know the bus lane hours and the box junction rule cold, because these are the ones you can fail without any drama at all
- Choose your lane early on multi-lane approaches and hold it, even if it is the wrong one
- Treat a 20mph limit as a limit, not a suggestion, because most of inner East London is one
The full marking system these two grades sit inside is in what the examiner is actually marking, and the whole path from provisional licence to test day is in the guide to learning to drive in East London.
The point of a mock test is to find out where your serious faults live before an examiner does, on the roads where they actually happen.
Book a mock testQuestions about majors
What is the difference between a serious and a dangerous fault?
A serious fault is something potentially dangerous or a breach of the law, whether or not anything actually went wrong. A dangerous fault involved actual danger to you, the examiner, the public or property. Both end the test.
Does the examiner speaking count as a fault?
It depends what they said. Directions and instructions are just the test running normally. Speaking to prevent something, such as saying "wait" as you begin to move, is an intervention and is recorded as a serious or dangerous fault.
Does the test stop when you get a serious fault?
Usually not. The examiner will carry on unless continuing would be unsafe, so most candidates finish the full test without knowing. Keep driving properly to the end, because you are often wrong about what was marked.
Is speeding always a serious fault?
Exceeding a limit is a breach of the law, which puts it in serious fault territory. A brief drift a mile or two over on a downhill may be marked as a driving fault depending on the circumstances, but it is not something to rely on, particularly in a 20mph zone.
Can you get a serious fault for hesitating?
Yes, if the hesitation is undue. Missing one gap at a roundabout is nothing. Sitting through several clear gaps while traffic builds behind you makes other drivers act unpredictably, and an examiner can grade that above a driving fault.
A mock test at £50 is the cheapest way to find the one junction on your route where you would have been marked.
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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.