AA research suggests most drivers wouldn’t score more than 70% in a basic road rules test.

The shocking figures have prompted the association to call for optional knowledge refreshers when licences are renewed.

The survey of 535 licensed drivers also found that people who had been driving for more than four decades scored the same as those who had their licence for just a year.

AA research and road safety manager Dylan Thomsen told Checkpoint it was “quite concerning” that not a single person was able to get all 24 questions in the test correct.

To gain a learner’s licence a theory test must be passed with 90% accuracy.

Thomsen said of the 535 surveyed drivers, only a handful were able to reach that mark.

“It really showed that we’ve got some big gaps around basic driver knowledge in New Zealand, and we think that that’s something that we need to fix.”

Thomsen said the areas where people got the most answers wrong were rules that had changed in the past decade or so.

“Bus lanes, cycle lanes, new types of variable speed signs, just those things that had kind of been introduced in the relatively recent past in New Zealand, that’s where the scores were lowest.”

The best scores were in give-way scenarios, but Thomsen said even those were only up to 80%.

“You really wanted a lot more than that, [when it comes to] knowing who has the right of way.”

Thomsen said it was disappointing to see that only 60% knew the rules around what to do when passing a cyclist.

Only 60% of the surveyed drivers knew the rules around what to do when passing a cyclist. Photo / 123rf

“These road rules, they’re not necessarily the things that lead to those fatal crashes that make the headlines, but it’s the bedrock of us sharing the roads well together and it’s all the minor incidents.

“It’s when people get it wrong and they have a near miss or maybe a minor prang that ends up in panel beating and insurance claims ... all those kind of things, if we improve it, the roads get a bit safer and also a lot nicer for people to use.”

Roundabouts were also a major issue, with many drivers not knowing when to correctly indicate, and others not indicating at all.

To tackle the knowledge gap, Thomsen said the AA wants the Government to use licence renewals as an opportunity for drivers to refresh their skills.

“We think the best and easiest way to do that is make it an optional thing when you renew your licence – you can either do it the standard way, just the paperwork exercise, or we can have a discount for people who do a road rules refresher.”

“It makes it a bit cheaper for people and they get to check that they actually do know all the road rules, see some of the recent things that have changed ... we just see it as a win-win.”

Thomson said the discount would only take out a small amount of money from the transport budget.

“We have about 380,000 licence renewals a year. If you were discounting those by $20, you’re talking less than $8 million.”

“We think that could potentially come from the current road safety advertising budget, or it could be taken out of money that’s collected from traffic fines.”

Thomsen said he believed hundreds of minor crashes could be prevented every day with the knowledge refresher.

  This story was first published on rnz.co.nz