Driving Test Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
98 free Driving Test trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
France made the world's first national driving test compulsory in 1899. Belgium let people buy a licence without one until 1977. Britain stopped testing for a year during the Suez Crisis, and its monarch is the only person in the country who has never needed a licence at all. Every country has quietly built its own rules about who may drive, at what age, with what letter stuck to the bumper. This quiz tours those rules: the early permits for Carl Benz and Russian motorised bicycles, the Geneva and Vienna conventions that made licences pink, the UK's L, D, P and R plates and its hazard perception clips, Japan's Young Leaf mark and Gold licence, Germany's first-aid course, Norway's dark-driving module, Brazil's simulator hours, New Zealand's colour-coded stages, Australia's logbooks, Saudi Arabia's 2018 change, and the US state that lets 14-year-olds behind the wheel. Fifty questions, four options each, with a short explanation after every answer. Play on your phone or print it for a quiz night.
30 of 98 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which country made a driving certificate compulsory nationwide as early as 1899?
France
France moved early: a certificate of capacity first demanded in the capital in 1893 was extended to the whole country by a decree of March 1899.
Q 02Carl Benz got a permit to drive his Motorwagen in 1888 after neighbours complained about what?
Its noise and smell
Its noise and smell had people in Mannheim cursing the Motorwagen, so in 1888 Benz had his drives approved in writing by the Grand Ducal authorities, without any test.
Q 03Prussia's compulsory 1903 driving tests were run by a body that supervised what?
Steam boilers
Steam boilers were the inspection association's original business; it had begun checking motor vehicles in 1900 and is the forerunner of today's TÜV, Germany's vehicle-testing body.
Q 04Which European country did not add a practical driving test to its licence exam until 1977?
Belgium
Belgium made a written exam compulsory in 1967 but added a test at the wheel only in 1977, long after its neighbours.
Q 05Which US state was the first to require both a driver's licence and a driving exam, in 1908?
Rhode Island
Rhode Island tested its drivers from 1908, five years after Massachusetts and Missouri had issued the country's first licences with no exam at all.
Q 06New York's first driver licensing law, passed in 1910, applied only to whom?
Professional chauffeurs
Professional chauffeurs were the only New Yorkers licensed from 1910; ordinary drivers in New York City followed in 1917 and the rest of the state not until 1924.
Q 07The 1949 Geneva Convention on Road Traffic said national driving permits should be which colour?
Pink
Pink was the colour laid down for the convention's model permit, and it turned up again in 1980, when the European Community ruled that its first common driving licence should be pink too.
Q 08The entire last page of an International Driving Permit must be drawn up in which language?
French
The preceding pages repeat it in several languages that must include English, Russian and Spanish.
Q 09The idea of an International Driving Permit was first mooted at a 1926 convention in which city?
Paris
Paris hosted the 1926 motor-traffic convention that first prescribed the document; the United Nations rewrote the rules at Geneva in 1949 and again at Vienna in 1968.
Q 10Leslie Hore-Belisha, the minister who brought in Britain's compulsory driving test, gave his name to which road feature?
Crossing beacons
Crossing beacons, the flashing amber globes at pedestrian crossings, are still called Belisha beacons; he introduced them in 1934, the year his Road Traffic Act set up the test.
Q 11UK driving tests were suspended for nearly five months from November 1956 because of what?
The Suez Crisis
The Suez Crisis brought petrol rationing: learners were allowed to drive unaccompanied, and examiners were put to work administering the fuel rations until tests resumed in April 1957.
Q 12Who is the only person not required to hold a licence to drive on Britain's roads?
The sovereign
The sovereign alone is outside the licensing law: Elizabeth II trained as an army driver and mechanic in 1945, yet never needed a licence to take the wheel.
Q 13What must a learner in Great Britain hold before taking a first driving lesson on the road?
A provisional licence
Q 21More than a third of the first Highway Code covered what?
Hand signals
Hand signals for drivers and police filled over a third of the 1931 booklet, which even told drivers of horse-drawn vehicles to rotate the whip above the head before a turn.
Q 22What did the 2022 edition of The Highway Code introduce?
A hierarchy of road users
A hierarchy of road users puts those most at risk in a collision, pedestrians first, at the top; it does not excuse anyone from behaving responsibly.
Q 23What is the official UK name for the three-point turn?
Turning in the road
A provisional licence can be applied for from the age of 15 years and 9 months, yet it normally allows driving a car only from 17, and then only beside a qualified supervisor.
Q 14Learner drivers in Wales may display plates bearing which letter instead of L?
D
D stands for dysgwr, the Welsh word for learner; either plate is legal in Wales, so a learner's car there may carry a red L, a red D or both.
Q 15In the British driving test, what is the result of committing a single 'serious' fault?
Failure
Failure follows any serious or dangerous fault, yet a candidate can make up to 15 ordinary driving faults, the so-called minors, and still pass.
Q 16What colour are the optional 'probationary' P plates some new drivers display in Great Britain?
Green
Green P plates are a courtesy in Great Britain, where nobody has to show them, but across the Irish Sea the idea is law: new drivers in Northern Ireland must display an R plate after passing.
Q 17A new British driver who reaches six penalty points within two years faces what?
Retaking both tests
Retaking both tests is the price: the licence is cancelled and the driver starts again as a learner, whereas experienced drivers are not usually disqualified until twelve points.
Q 18Which section joined the UK theory test in 2002?
Hazard perception
Hazard perception shows 14 clips and pays up to five points for spotting each danger early, but clicking continuously or in a pattern scores nothing.
Q 19Since December 2017, most candidates in the British practical test must follow directions from what?
A sat nav
A sat nav supplied and set up by the examiner guides about four candidates in five; taking a wrong turning costs nothing unless a fault is made on the way.
Q 20Before a British driving test begins, the candidate must read what from 20 metres away?
A number plate
A number plate on a parked car is the whole eyesight check; a candidate who cannot read it fails on the spot and the test ends before any driving.
Turning in the road, in full 'using forward and reverse gears', was dropped from the practical test in December 2017, though instructors are still expected to teach it.
Q 24The 'show me, tell me' questions in the British driving test are about what?
Vehicle safety checks
Vehicle safety checks are the subject: one 'tell me' question before setting off, such as how to check the brakes, and one 'show me' task on the move, such as washing the windscreen.
Q 25Who must take Britain's 'extended' driving test, which lasts about twice as long as the standard one?
Drivers returning from a ban
Drivers returning from a ban can be ordered to take it before they get a licence back: more than an hour on the road instead of the usual thirty-five to forty minutes.
Q 26In Japan, the leaf-shaped shoshinsha mark on a car tells other motorists that its driver is what?
A beginner
A beginner must show the mark for a year after getting a licence, and the law shields whoever carries it: motorists who cut in on a car displaying it, or crowd it from the side, commit a traffic offence.
Q 27Until 1996, how did driving examiners test British learners on The Highway Code?
Spoken questions
Spoken questions about The Highway Code, put by the examiner during the driving test, gave way on 1 July 1996 to a separate written paper, which moved onto computer screens in 2000.
Q 28What is a driving licence called in Germany?
Führerschein
Führerschein joins Führer, here a driver, to Schein, a certificate; Germans can pass the test at 17, but until they turn 18 may drive only with a named adult beside them, a rule meant to cut novice drivers' crashes.
Q 29The 'Dutch Reach', recommended by The Highway Code since 2022, is a safer way of doing what?
Opening a car door
Opening a car door by reaching across with the arm furthest from it makes you turn and look over your shoulder, so you are less likely to swing the door into a passing cyclist.
Q 30The 'two-second rule' taught to learner drivers is a way of judging what?
A safe following distance
A safe following distance means passing a fixed point, such as a sign, at least two seconds after the car in front; The Highway Code says to double the gap on wet roads.