Hundreds of impostors caught taking UK driver's tests

$2,700 IS REPORTEDLY THE GOING RATE FOR WRITTEN AND PRACTICAL PARTS OF EXAM

    Driver's license tests are apparently slightly more difficult in some European countries than they are in the U.S., difficult enough for hundreds of impostors to have been caught in the U.K. taking tests for others in the past 10 months, according to information obtained by The Times newspaper.

    The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA), the government body that administers driver tests and issues vehicle operator licenses, has uncovered almost 700 impostors standing in for student drivers for the written or the driving parts of tests in 2014, according to The Times. The DVSA reports that it has encountered 677 impostors for the period of April through the end of December of 2014, compared to 554 cases for the previous year. 37 jail sentences have been handed out as a result of some 188 arrests during 2014 and the start of 2015.

    Studious, learned gang members are cited as the leading providers of impostor services, which can run for as high as £1,800 or approximately $2,700 for both portions of the driving test, with the theory portion of the test usually going for £800, which works out to about $1,200.

   "Driving test fraud is a serious offense and is dealt with accordingly," Andy Rice of the DVSA told The Times. "We have stringent measures in place to detect fraudulent activity and work closely with the police to bring all offenders to justice. Thankfully this type of crime is extremely rare."

    Nearly 700 detected attempts in 10 months in a nation of some 64 million is indeed a small number, though the reported pricing and the undetected attempts at impersonating student drivers on the test hint at a fairly high level of difficulty.

    The theory part of the test is composed of a multiple choice section and a hazard perception section. The multiple choice of test consists of 50 questions, 43 of which must be answered correctly in order to receive a passing score. The hazard perception part of the test challenges student drivers to identify developing hazards on a screen that shows a road from the driver's perspective, with students having to click on potential hazards with a computer mouse. The driving part of the test consists of 40 minutes of actual driving with a DVSA instructor, who will ask the examinee questions during the drive and evaluate the skills of the student.

    In a related story, an interpreter was jailed for a year for helping almost 100 Mandarin speakers pass the test, according to a report from The Express newspaper. Test conditions permit the hiring of interpreters to administer the test, and DVSA officials became suspicious when a particular interpreter's services experienced a sudden surge in interest from test takers. The interpreter was discovered to have been giving students answers on the theory part of the test in exchange for just over £100, or approximately $150.