Pass Your Driving Theory Test: 2010 Edition (DS) review "Fact is, Pass your Driving Theory Test is never going to be the top of anyone’s wish list unless they actually want to pass their driving theory test, but, should this be the case, it’s a well-made and competent study guide that will vastly enhance your chances to pass a fiddly exam."

It would be easy to assume that the point of Pass your Driving Theory Test would be to do exactly as the title suggests. I don’t have a witty punch line for this one; it is, and it does a very good job at making sure you know all the fiddly answers needed to legally drive on British roads.

I have to let some things slide -- like how you're told if you’re driving through a tunnel and your car catches fire, you should drive out of the other end before taking action. While, in the meanwhile, your ride is still on fire and likely to explode. It’s not the title’s fault; that can be accredited to the source material it helps drum into your feeble little mind.

I will accredit it with competency. Offering to help perspective car and motorcyclists alike in their pursuit of a theory test pass, the title offers you two separate profiles to pander to you needs, be it differing vehicles or dominant hand. You’re asked to hold the DS like you would a book while your in-house tutorials are administered.

The options available boil down to multiple choices on what kind of test you want to partake in, ranging from the aptly-named quick test and custom test to one that splits the questions into any of the fourteen categories the DSA assign their questions into, such as Alertness, Rules of the Road and Hazard Awareness. There’s also the big important Mock Test that replicates the very exam you’re studying to pass.

I took this test right away with an air of infinite smugness. Of the 50 questions offered, you need to nail 43 to pass. I got 40 and failed.

But where Pass your Driving Theory Test triumphs is where most websites offering you the chance to test yourself fail; when you get a question wrong, this will be highlighted after the test, the right answer supplied and an explanation of why this is given. Sure, I still don’t agree that if my car catches fire in a tunnel I should calmly drive it out the other side before panicking and/or exploding, but I now know it’s what The DSA expect me to do, whether I actually agree with it or not!

So I looked over the 10 questions I got wrong, saw what I should have done then read the explanation for why. Knowing the reasons behind why I erred made the correct answers more obtainable, so I decided to try the test again. This time, I selected the option to not include the answer I’d previously marked correctly; I had them right, so decided to focus on what I didn’t know instead. It’s an appreciated inclusion that ensures I’m not constantly answering questions I already know and am able to instead focus on things I might not. Obviously, I passed my next test, proving my previous failure was a fluke that I blamed on questions centred around trams. Trams haven’t been in use since 1925!

Then I presented it to someone who's been legally driving for thirty-one years and gleefully mocked her when she only scored 38/50. I even helped her when the burning car in the tunnel question came up, too.

Fact is, Pass your Driving Theory Test is never going to be the top of anyone’s wish list unless they actually want to pass their driving theory test, but, should this be the case, it’s a well-made and competent study guide that will vastly enhance your chances to pass a fiddly exam.

Staff review by Gary Hartley (March 27, 2009) Gary Hartley arbitrarily arrives, leaves a review for a game no one has heard of, then retreats to his 17th century castle in rural England to feed whatever lives in the moat and complain about you.