BIG READ: Who is passing and failing driving tests in Nenagh?

placeholder image — BIG READ: Who is passing and failing driving tests in Nenagh?

Back in April, the Nenagh driving test centre was reported to have the lowest pass rate in the country

In April this year, the Nenagh driving test centre made the headlines for having the lowest pass rate in Ireland.

Newstalk revealed that Nenagh had a 39.56% pass rate.

This week TipperaryLive dug a little deeper into the statistics.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, we requested from the Road Safety Authority (RSA) the gender, age and nationality breakdown of those who passed and failed the driving test in Nenagh in 2021.

Nationality statistics were unavailable, but gender and age reveal some interesting insights.

Gender

Three hundred and forty-eight men and 421 women completed the test. For 96 of the testers, no gender was recorded.

The figures we received revealed that women represented 51.3% of failed tests.

Thirty-eight point five percent were by men, and 10.2% were logged as gender unknown.

Of those who passed, 45.1% were female, 42.6% were male, and 12.4% were gender unknown.

CAPTION: GU stands for gender unknown. Based on 865 tests that resulted in a pass or failure. Women made up 421 completed tests while men made up 348. Ninety-six were logged as gender unknown

The theory test

However, figures show that men failed the theory test more often than women.

Of the 4746 tests taken, men took 2591 of them and women 2155.

Women passed 1564, and 591 failed.

Men passed 1833 and failed 758.

Women safer drivers?

Overall the statistics show that more people fail the driving test than pass. Regardless of gender and age, 501 people failed, and 364 passed.

More women failed than men but does this mean they are less safe drivers?

It should be noted that the figures only relate to the Nenagh test centre and only to tests not practice.

Additionally, national, 2020 figures by the CSO show that women get less penalty points than men.

Men incurred 118,413 (66.6%) while women incurred 59,502 (33.4%).

This suggests women are more likely to follow the rules of the road.

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Age

Young people between 16 and 21 make up the largest age group of tests taken in Nenagh.

Of the 865 people who took the test in 2021, 461 were between the ages of 16 and 21.

One hundred and ninety-two passed, and 276 failed.

The second was the 26-plus age group, who made up 239 of the tests, passing 107 and failing 132. The 22-25 age group passed in 65 cases and failed in 93.

CAPTION: The number of tests booked were 977 while 865 resulted in a a pass or fail grade. All graphs are based on the latter and relate to the year 2021

Complaints

TipperaryLive also requested the number of complaints made about both the driving test and theory test centre.

The RSA advised us that the number of complaints was not “readily available”.