Driving nowhere fast

People going through the driver licence regime are having a decent wait on their hands.

It currently takes 35 days of waiting to sit a full driver licence test. The restricted test wait times are worse at 46 days.

The target is to have 90% of people sitting their test within 30 days.

After the previous government removed fees for resits, the wait times blew out to over 60 days with a backlog of over 70,000 people waiting.

The government had worked on reducing the wait times by introducing the following measures:

• A limit of one free re-sit for Class 1 driver licence tests
• Putting a 10 day stand down in place following a second failed theory test attempt on the same day. 
• Removing free re-sits for overseas licence conversions
• Recruiting 52 additional Driver Testing Officers and 19 temporary Driver Testing Officers to increase the number of tests able to be completed each week.

They are now reducing demand further by increasing the time an overseas licence can be used. The increase sees the overseas driver licence period going from 12 months to 18 months. 

The driver licensing rules will first need to be changed to allow an extension to 18 months. This will take effect from November 2024, and will revert back to 12 months in two years time.

The government release is found here:

https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/further-action-tackle-driver-licence-wait-times