A Press Association News Agency freedom information request revealed 2,844 attempts to cheat during driving tests in the year to September 2025, 47% higher than the previous year. <\/p>\n
Of those, more than a third (1,113) involved the use of technology, such as an earpiece connected via Bluetooth to a concealed phone, to try to cheat at a theory test.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile people attempted 1,084 times to try to take theory tests while impersonating the registered candidate. <\/p>\n
And in 647 incidents, people pretended to be the registered candidate for a practical test.<\/p>\n
Dr Rasha Kassem, leader of the Fraud Research Group at Aston University, warned of the dangers of people passing tests illegally without actually knowing how to drive.<\/p>\n
“It means that there will be more accidents, collisions, insurance issues as well, damage to the car, and damage to human beings, injuries, and in some cases, death,” she said.<\/p>\n
“There has to be public awareness, because this is a serious crime, from my perspective, and also in the eyes of the law. It is fraud.”<\/p>\n
Impersonators, and those who use them, face punishments ranging from driving bans to prison sentences. They can also be ordered to carry out unpaid work or made to pay court costs. <\/p>\n
Ninety-six people were prosecuted for attempting to cheat on driving tests or impersonate candidates in the 12 months to September last year.<\/p>\n
Steps taken to try and prevent fraud including matching a practical test candidate’s face with their photo ID, as well as asking theory candidates to roll up their sleeves and show their pockets are empty. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Press Association News Agency freedom information request revealed 2,844 attempts to cheat during driving tests in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381424,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-381423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}