Look Out!
Sorry, that was a bit dramatic. Here’s an introduction to the Hazard Perception Test
D avid Hasselhoff. The Hoff. He’s not a person that pops up in etc. very often, but he’s here today to illustrate why the hazard perception part of the driving theory test is useful. When you’re bowling down the street as Michael Knight, driving an indestructible car, you can pretty much put your feet on the dash. KITT will steer, see what’s coming up ahead, provide you with light conversation, and even if you get hit by a truck, the truck’s going to come off worse.
Contrast this with you. When you’re bowling down the street in whatever car you first get to drive, it’s up to you. You need to scan the road ahead, predict dangers, and react to them. That truck had better register or you, friends, are toast. As you’ve probably said to yourself many times before: you are not the Hoff. And your car isn’t indestructible. So it’s important to be prepared for what’s coming.
The Hazard Perception Test (HPT)
When you first pass your driving test, you know the highway code, you know what all the signs mean, you know how to control your car – all good. What you won’t ever know is what’s around the next corner – but you can learn to be ready if something does leap cheerfully into your path, and that’s what this element of the theory test is all about.
How the test works
You’ll be shown 14 video clips on a computer. Each one is of a driving situation, seen from the point of view of a driver – i.e. you. Hazards will develop in real time, and the object is to react to them as soon as you see things starting to happen. If you think a hazard is developing, you click on your mouse, and keep clicking as the hazard plays out – or as new ones appear.
You score points depending on how quickly you react; the pass mark is 44 out of 75. The maximum score is five points for every clip, and you’re scored on your highest response – so if you score three points, then one, then five, you’ll get five points in total for that clip.
What’s a hazard?
A hazard is something that will make you slow down, change direction, or move in any way differently to the way you’d planned. For example, a car pulls out in front of you at a junction, causing you to brake so the front of your car doesn’t get cosy with the back of it. That’s a hazard. The test trains you to be observant at all times – so you should have seen the car approaching the junction, realised it wasn’t going to stop, and planned what to do: slow down, so there’s no danger of collision. And then flash your lights, wave your fist, and snarl. Actually, not that bit.
Well, that’s easy…
It would be, if that’s all that happened. But in traffic, there’s usually a lot going on, and a lot of potential hazards – however, not all of them are going to turn into a situation you’ll need to do something about. A child standing on the edge of the pavement is a potential hazard you need to be aware of; it doesn’t mean they’re actually going to run into the road, though. It’s all about being observant, so that if something does happen, you’ve got time to react. Each video clip on the HPT has one hazard (except for one clip, which has two hazards, the villains), and lots of potential ones; you need to react to them all. But you’ll only score points on the hazard that actually develops.
Click-click-click-click
‘Aha,’ you say, ‘In that case, I will simply click the mouse regularly and beat the system that way.’ Well, you can try. But the powers that be were expecting that, and have designed the software to know if you’re just clicking at random. If you do, you will get no points for the clip, making it harder to pass. Better just to concentrate and spot things happening. The child standing on the edge of the pavement: click. They stay put, you drive past. The car approaching the junction: click. It doesn’t slow down: click again, and so on, as it pulls out in front of you. You spot the hazard early, and keep clicking as it develops to show you’re keeping an eye on it. But bash out morse code on the mouse, and you’ll be going nowhere.
How to prepare
There are a few ways to train your brain:
