Failed hazard perception! (Update on page 2: I passed)

[Khanivore]

I've been driving for almost 25 years. I didn't take my theory test today for granted. I studied the Highway Code and got 48/50 on the multiple choice test. However I only scored 22/75 on the hazard perception test! I have no damn idea what I did wrong or what I would do differently next time! Really gutted and not sure what to do next?

[drbaig]

Play some video games. I found the hazard perception test very easy. But yeah play some video games improves the reflexes.

there are loads of clips on in the internet. practice them. Its all about practice with these clips.

[southglasgow]

Been driving for over twenty years when I did the Theory Test. Like yourself, I had a pretty strong score with the multiple choice questions, however, didn't know what they wanted from the hazard perception test. All new to me too.

I can recommend you do a lot of the online examples, they helped me a lot, and when I sat in front of the actual test, I had a better idea of what they wanted.

Click when you think there is a possible hazard, then continue to click as it develops.

EG : Kid at side of road, - click. Kid steps out onto road as you approach - click. Vehicle stops to let kid get to otherside - click.

Some examples here:

Mock Hazards
and
The AA

Hope it helps.
____________________
CBT June 09 - Kymco KR 125 July 09 -> Sept 09. Suzuki RV125 June 10 -> Theory June 13, MOD 1 July 13, MOD 2 August 13. Woohoo -> April 14. Yamaha XJ6N.

[Rigga]

The hpt is all about timing, ie it is possible to press the button too soon. Basically you have awindow to press the button in.

Get a practice DVD from thesupermarket and practice.
____________________
Current bike: Honda CBR 1100xx

[Rigga]

The hpt is all about timing, ie it is possible to press the button too soon. Basically you have awindow to press the button in.

Get a practice DVD from thesupermarket and practice.
____________________
Current bike: Honda CBR 1100xx

[-Monty-]

As said previously, get a practice DVD. If I didn't have that when I did my theory I would have failed for sure. Of the two elements of the theory test (multi choice and hazard perception) I found hazard perception the harder one as it's quite easy to fail even if you know everything they want you to know. I think it's more about exam technique rather than knowledge. Everyone knows when they see a hazard (i.e. child at side of the road waiting to cross). It's all about clicking at the right time and making sure you don't click too often. If you click too often or in a pattern it will fail you for that particular clip as it will think your just randomly clicking to cheat.

Personally, I think the hazard perception is a little pointless due to the (as above) amount of exam technique required over actual knowledge.
____________________
Present: [Kawasaki ZX7r][Suzuki DRZ 400s]
Past: [Honda PCX 125] [Yamaha RXS 100] [Honda CB 500] [Triumph Speed Four] [Honda ST1100 Pan European - Po-Po Edition]

[Khanivore]

Ahhh I didn't keep clicking! Damn what a waste of £35.

I will buy the practice DVD and rebook

[waffles]

The idea is that if you click when the hazard appears you get "maximum points" for that question, if you click a little afterwards you still get credit but not as much and so on. If you click too many times or too quickly you lose your score for that question.

Or at least that is how it was explained to me
____________________
Theory test - 19/8/09, CBT - 11/10/09, MOD 1 - 16/8/10, MOD 2 - 27/10/10
Past rides Yamaha XT125X, Triumph TT600, Honda XR250
Current rides Suzuki GSXR 600, Honda MSX125

[shaanaleem92]

I noticed people with road experience fail the harzard perception bit as in real life you anticipate anything as early as. Possible to avoid danger, when doing your theory test, treat it as if you are a complete newbie with no road experience and play it like a game, just practise and you will know what they are after and should pass with flying colours

[Rogerborg]

I guarantee that you were clicking too early.

It's aimed at Lucy Learner, you've expected to click just before the moment when you'd be forced to react to whatever noncery is going on in the clip.

Drove me up the wall, I kept clicking at the point where you'd take pre-emptive action to avoid the situation happening in the first palce.

Get a practice DVD, and try not to ragequit when you see how daft the scoring zones are, just treat it as a game.
____________________
Biking is 1/20th as dangerous as horse riding.
GONE: HN125-8, LF-250B, GPz 305, GPZ 500S, Burgman 400 // RIDING: F650GS (800 twin), Royal Enfield Bullet Electra 500 AVL, Ninja 250R because racebike

[lukamon]

the one that made me laugh was on the demonstrations at the start, a wv Passat reversing strait into the street from a driveway. you see the car put its reverse light on, so you click, then it starts moviong, so you click again. again when it goes past the wall, and again when its about to go into the street, then again just before the driver brakes.

then you fail the question for clicking too many times
____________________
killa wrote: Im an ass man myself

[Teflon-Mike]

No Shame.
It Is a Video Game.
And it's like a spot the ball competition; "Place your 'x' where you think that a panel of judges beleive best represents where the ball ought to be" Kind of thing....
They put the 'click' window, NOT where a driver might spot a 'hazard' but where the panel of DSA judges expects a typical learner to spot it.
When I was instructing, and the HPT was being developed, we got to play with some demo's, and honestly, almost none of us could pass the damn thing!
Trouble is, as an experienced driver/rider, some of the 'hazards' are so banal, you dont conciousely percieve anything to as a 'hazard'... it's just 'the roads', stuff you deal with twenty times a day, and instinctively percieve, process and respond to without any real conciouse thought of "Oooh! No That Danwus!" And tend to have dealt with it umpety seconds before the DSA stick their click window around it in the vid... so you either dont click, at all, you click so early as its not registered, or by the time you have thought, "Oh! is THIS what I'm supposed to see as a hazard?!" you click too late.
Fact its a video and shot with a reletively wide angle lens doesn't help either.
I'm sat now in a wing back arm-chair; I can see both 'wings' of the chair back in my periferal vision... about a 170 degree field of view.
Thing is, while I can 'see' everything from almost shoulder to shoulder, bit I pay most attention to is actually only about 15 degrees or so in the middle... something a little wider than my computer screen, a few inches in front of me.
Lets talk cameras for a moment; when I got my first SLR camera I was told that the 'standard' 50mm lens it had gave an angle of view of about 50 degrees, and that that was 'standard' because it was the same as the human eyes 'natural' field of view....
But it's not.. I can see both wings of my armchair at the same time...
Ah yes! I was told, but you have two eyes....
This 'sort' of works, two eyes double the angle of view, except that they still have a wider field than a 'standard' camera lens, though the over-lapping bit in the middle where we have best sterioscopic 'depth perception' does sort of account for why we pay most attension to the middle 15 degrees or so.
So our 'vision' is working rather differently to a cameras.
We have 'almost' as wide a field of view as a very short 'fish eye' lens in total, but at the same time, we have a bit in the middle, where our 2 eyes fields over lap that is quite narrow, and giving us an area of concentration with a field of view about that of a telephoto-lens.... and quite a powerful one at that, (about equivilent to a 150mm lense on a 35mm camera)...
So the 'standard' non wide angle, non telephoto lens of a traditional SLR with aprox 50degree field of view is an approximation to what the human eye 'sees', in so far as its the bit of our full field of periferal vision, that with a little 'scanning' shifting that 15 degree sweet spot around a little, we tend to take most note of.
Oh-Kay....
So they fit camera to car and drive down hazard strewn road; and to get a field of view that encompasses close to everything we would 'see'... they have to fit a wide-angle lens, something with an angle of view between 60 & 70 degrees.... on a camera that would be a 28 or 35mm wide angle lens, like an old snap-shot compact; and it gives a nice 'vista' through the windscreen.
However, what it doesn't do is what the human eye does, without us conciousely thinking, which is to 'zoom in' on areas of interest....
Err... yeah.. our eyes don't do it like a camera and magnify the image, cropping out all else... but is similar.... our eyes keep 'seeing' the same angle of scene... but our brain pays more attension to the bit of interest, and we take more notice of it....
SO... frustrating; you watch video clip;
1/ you have no depth perception its a 2D image.
2/ its a fixed wide angle of view, and only the stuff closest to the camera is 'enlarged' and shown in detail.
3/ Distant objects are closer than they appear... and resolved in much lesser detail, that we would 'see' if we were actually 'in' the car.
So doing the HPT we are denied the 'advance warning' our eyes would give from zooming in our attention on distant subjects; yet we are straining to 'see' into that middle distance where we would be looking as a driver (as opposed to a video game player).

It is ultimately a VERY poor approximation of 'virtual reality', as they have as yet to invent a camera that has a simultaneous fish eye zoom lens like the human vision!

AND like spot the ball... its where the ball out to be in the opinion of the judges... not where it really was!

The treat it like a video game advice is valid; but at the same time, you do have to make allowance for the spot-the-ball effect, and accept that there is more than a small element of 'luck' in it.

Only other advice I can offer? Get the genuine DSA 'Crown-Copyright' practice DVD.

The DSA did up until a year or so back, release the actual test clips to third parties for 'tuitional material'; but they did NOT release the 'test' as in the click scoring program, or the timings of where it was applied to the vids... hence the third party practice DVDs didn't always score exactly like the real test.

The official DSA one I believe is not the same as the actual tests either; there is something about them not releasing the actual test data, but it IS the closest thing out there to it.
____________________
My Webby'Tef's-tQ, loads of stuff about my bikes, my Land-Rovers, and the stuff I do with them!
Current Bikes:'Honda VF1000F' ;'CB750F2N' ;'CB125TD ( 6 3 of em!)'; 'Montesa Cota 248'. Learner FAQ's:= 'U want to Ride a Motorbike! Where Do U start?'

[Doovy]

Passed my car HPT with pretty decent score at 17 years old, barely passed the motorbike HPT at 19 after 3 years on the road... and they were the same clips too

Hit and miss, not a great representation of life.
____________________
Yamaha RXS 100 > Honda CD 250 > Honda Hornet 600 > Honda CBR 600RR > Yamaha RXS 100 > Kawasaki ZX6R J2 > Yamaha FZ1

[supZ]

[Doovy]

[drbaig]

I got 73 on my hazard perception. Not because I was able to see the hazard quickly but I was able to time them perfectly with all the practice I had done.

Initially I was crap at them because they want you to click in a certain time frame window, but dont click too much. That annoyed me so I practiced them a lot because I didnt want to mess the test up. Funny thing is that I was late for my test by a few mins because i forgot to put the right alarm.

on my bike theory test I got 60 because I did not practice the hazard perception at all only the bike specific theory questions. Its all about practice.
____________________
yzf 600r

[Nemo]

Basically, as a veteran driver, spot the hazard, then wait 10 minutes, maybe have a coffe, then click.

I had the same problem, just clicked a fraction later.
____________________
Previously owned: Kawasaki KH125, Suzuki GP125, Suzuki GX 125, Honda CB125 TDC '83, Honda ntv 600, Kawasaki ER5, Kawasaki ZZR600, Aprilia RSV 1000 Mille
Now own: Ducati 848 evo

[Khanivore]

Thanks chaps I has serious rage over this yesterday. Feel calmer today. Can't get another theory test for 2 weeks! Will buy the dsa DVD and play the arse off it between now and then. DAS course now full until October so I get to do DAS in the rain probably, if I pass the theory that is. Yippee.

[The Disapproving Brit]

The tip I was given that seemed to work is to click when you see the hazard, wait a second, then click again. That way, you're not clicking so much as to trigger click abuse, but you're allowing for the software not registering the hazard until after you have.
____________________
Current Bikes: 1983 Honda VF400FD / 2003 Honda VT750 Shadow
Bike Test Passed 18/03/09, Car Test Passed 14/05/13

[Sload]

I did the same and was pretty pissed off. Hammered the free online ones and passed the resit without trouble.

Dont neglects the other test section though while you practice.

Plenty off them about https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=hazard+perception+test&oq=hazard+perception+test&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j5j0j69i60l2.6290j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
____________________
Honda Varadero >> Triumph Speed Four >> Honda CBR1100xx

[SteveZZR]

Just posted about this.

I clicked about ten times a clip to making sure i clicked for all the hazards and clicked again after the hazard to make sure i got it. Must have been waiting too long as i didn't get 5 on any buy got 4 on a few. Got 2 for a lot of them.

Was robbed of my pass because the software decided i was abusing it and zero pointed me on one clip. I had only clicked 7 times and it was spread out. Have submitted a complaint demanding they review and correct the result or reimburse me with a free re test. Doubt I'll get anywhere but will make sure i cost them some time before they get away with robbery by dodgy software!

[PH1L_T]

I've got a 2011 disc kicking around if you want it? It does help.

[Khanivore]

[PH1L_T]

No worries.

PM me your addy and I'll pop it in the post tomorrow.

Don't worry about paying....just pass it on when you're done

[MCW]