Shorten Waiting Time For Driving Tests: Auditor

The Director of Audit on Wednesday urged the Transport Department to do more to shorten the queue for road driving tests, saying the waiting time has increased significantly in recent years.

In a written report, the director noted that the average waiting time for those taking road tests for non-commercial vehicles had gone up by between 30 to 284 percent from 2015 to last year.

For example, the wait for a private car road test at a Hong Kong Island test centre went up from an average of 111 days in 2015 to 294 days.

The average queuing time for a motorcycle road test, meanwhile, shot up from 67 days to 257 at the same centre.

The auditor also found that seven of the 13 driving test centres had failed to reach an 80-percent utilisation rate in 2019.

It made a range of recommendations, including calling on transport officials to streamline duty reporting arrangements for examiners, who at present, have to sign in at the Pui Ching Road Office every morning before they are randomly assigned to one of the test venues to ensure the tests are “fair, efficient and corruption-free”.

Meanwhile, the auditor highlighted the need to update the question bank for written tests more frequently.

It noted that although the latest update was made in September 2020, the previous one was made in August 2000.

“As a result, no questions on the changes in traffic regulations and legislations related to road safety had been asked in the written test for many years,” the report said.

The transport commissioner agreed with the audit recommendations.