The unassisted driving test may move to 3am

Learner drivers who want a licence valid for cars without driver assistance would be able to sit the test only while the test vehicle's software is offline for updates, under a scheme being modelled by one of the larger regional licensing bodies. The windows would be published nightly, in the format used for coastal weather.

New cars are increasingly sold with driver-assistance systems such as lane-keeping, automatic emergency braking and adaptive cruise control, and in several markets some of these features are now mandatory on new models. Vehicle software is updated over the air, and manufacturers schedule those updates in maintenance windows during which certain functions are unavailable. Driving-test authorities have begun to debate how to examine candidates in cars that intervene in steering and braking, and some already specify which assistance features may stay on during the test. Waiting lists for practical driving tests have grown in a number of countries, and booking slots are often released online at set times.

Licensing Area Four, issued 2300. Lane-keeping: withdrawn from 0200, returning 0445. Automatic emergency braking: intermittent, becoming absent by 0230, good later. Parking sensors: poor. Adaptive cruise: not available for the test. Visibility of the examiner: moderate, occasionally good. Candidates: light, backing north-westerly. Outlook for the following night: no maintenance window expected, all tests assisted. Outlook for the weekend: a firmware release is likely, unassisted conditions possible from Saturday, timing uncertain. Candidates are reminded that between these hours the car will not be watching.

The bulletin would be issued each evening by the licensing body and would determine which test a candidate could sit. Under the scheme, the test fleet, all of it supplied with lane-keeping, emergency braking and a steering wheel that resists being turned towards a cyclist, would receive software updates overnight in a fixed maintenance window agreed with the manufacturer. During that window the assistance would be switched off. This would be the only period in which a candidate could be observed driving without it, and so the only period in which the full licence, the one that also covers cars built before cars had opinions, could be issued.

The two-tier licence would follow from a change the body would already be making to the fleet itself. The regional body's cars would be replaced on a four-year cycle, and the incoming models could not have their assistance disabled by a switch, only by an update, and only briefly. The daytime test, which the body would call the Standard Test, would assess a candidate's ability to allow the car to do what it was going to do anyway. The examiner's marking sheet would retain the box for “steering”, for continuity. A candidate who resisted the lane-keeping would be marked down for fighting the vehicle.

Demand for the night window would be managed by a booking queue opening the moment the bulletin is issued. Candidates in a trial of the scheme would describe refreshing the page for forty minutes. Réka Halmi, a nineteen-year-old trainee pharmacist, said she secured a slot at 03:10 and then sat in her instructor's car in the test-centre car park with the engine off and the heating on, waiting for the lane-keeping to go dark. “You can feel it leave,” she said. “The wheel goes loose, like a dog that's been told to stay.” She passed, and drove home at half past four on roads she said were mostly hers.

Driving instructors would adapt. Several would offer a Night Package, in which the pupil learns exclusively between two and five in the morning so that the test conditions feel familiar. Tibor Vass, an instructor of twenty-two years, said his diary now resembled that of a baker. “I teach clutch control at three, parallel parking at four, and at a quarter to five the car wakes up and starts correcting them, and I go to bed,” he said. He said the pupils were better drivers than the daytime ones and considerably worse at conversation.

The window would not be guaranteed. A manufacturer could postpone a release, in which case the assistance would remain on all night and the bulletin would be amended to read “unassisted conditions: nil”. Candidates already seated would be offered the Standard Test instead, or a voucher. Conversely, an update could fail midway, leaving the car without lane-keeping for a full day; the body would treat this as a weather event and open extra slots, and examiners would be summoned from home. One examiner, Gergő Andrási, said the best day of his career had been a corrupted download. “Fourteen tests,” he said. “Real ones.”

The scheme's own documents would acknowledge that the window is shrinking. Manufacturers would be moving to updates that install while the car is in use, with no interruption to assistance, and the body's forecast for the coming years would show the unassisted period contracting from three hours to forty minutes, and then to a figure it describes as “nominal”. When it reaches zero the full licence would simply cease to be issued, and the existing ones would be honoured until their holders' cars were scrapped. Ms Halmi said she intended to keep hers laminated. “It's the only exam I ever took,” she said, “where the invigilator was asleep.”