Learner drivers forced to buy tests on black market as companies blockbook slots | Hacker News Reader

Learner drivers forced to buy tests on black market as companies blockbook slots

theguardian.com

So drop the "can change name and licence number after booking" feature and kill this, done.

I thought the same thing when I read it.

The funny thing in the article is that that tidbit almost reads like a throwaway line.

Pretty soon, everything will require a proof of identity, either administered by Apple/Google via their mobile device or, ideally, a government provided API that is baked into law as an inalienable right.

In the specific case of booking a UK driving test, you must already have a photocard 'provisional driving license' and you must be willing to provide it, for it to be exchanged for a full driving license.

So although mandatory proof of identity is problematic in many contexts, it's not a problem here.

Then of course the solution is to simply limit it to 1 appointment per person (or license number) at any given time. And not allow name changes. Seems like a fix that can be done in a couple hours at most.

> A provisional licence number and candidate name is required to book a test but this can be changed once the slot is sold at a profit. Some of the brokers use business accounts that are intended for instructors to book multiple slots for students.

Yes. That fact that it isn't is pretty clear evidence that somebody's getting paid to allow this.

"must already have a photocard 'provisional driving license' "

No, one can also use a paper (green) provisional license, and then you have to take a passport to the practical test. These are the only non-photocard licenses which are still valid (in provisional or full variants).

After passing, one would end up with a photocard full license.

It's lazy requirements gathering and taking shortcuts that gave them this. Or: and I will use bad language here, some idiot developer stores this in a document DB and has a field for name & license number. Or: GDPR doesn't allow devs or makes them too scared to capture PII information on account sign-up.

We had this exact same crap in South Africa when the government went out on a tender and awarded a DEI company the project to do a license renewal booking system.

That seems like an incredibly easy resolution, and one wonders why it wasn't part of the functional spec up front.

Weirdly, and I hope this was paraphrased poorly, TFA includes:

"Driving instructors are calling for a ban on excessive profits from the reselling of tests."

It's the 'excessive' bit that gives me the chills.

I feel the default position should be no profits from, and in fact no reselling of, driving tests.

Because most people don't think about how systems can be abused and if you're interfacing with public agencies, you do it less. If it's not explicitly in the requirements, it's not worked on. It's wild how often simple things get overlooked because "nobody asked."

Kinda like SMTP in the early internet. No one had really thought about spam and bad actors. Pretty much no one had IP restrictions and relay rules. Then eternal September happened.

This said, abuse production generally comes with pretty heavy costs and sometimes systems are never stressed in a way they get abused, so there are trade offs.

We really need to start taking a game-theory[?] attitude to any public service that involves money exchange, to prevent "viral capitalism" from piggybacking on the underlying necessity.

Not to mention the fact its not dealt with in high school as a compulsory credit (where all the knowledge, physical, and beaureaucratic resources are provided rather than the private hell the system has become) is suggestive of how big a scam and an intentionally weaponized social determinant it is.

It is actually quite difficult and hard to ensure one can successfully move through it once you have to pay for everything and you're "on your own" procedurally. You may never actually get yourself out of that infinite loop and it severely limits consequent job and economic outcomes that feeds right back in to that compunding the stickiness of the entire state.

Excellent work. Now ask yourself this question. If it's that easy to solve why hasn't it been solved?

I'll get you started, it's either not that easy to solve or it's not an easy change to implement.

Just because your can imagine what a code patch might look like doesn't mean it's an easy fix. For a start, the release process for a public body can be a little clunky.

It would be trivially easy to remove the field from the website, but it is probably there for a reason, people do change their names, and may in some cases have a changed licence number so they are covering some edge cases.

Driving Schools block-booking tests has been a problem for at least a decade - when I took my own test. I wrote a basic screen-scraper to alert me when there was a cancellation, and when I mentioned this to my instructor he explained that the problem, at least then, was that driving schools could book as many slots as they wanted and get a full refund for cancelled slots. So as long as they had the capital to pay up-front, they could then offer their students the best pick of test slots, which became a reason to use those driving schools.

At the time I'd half considered wrapping the script in a UI and letting my instructor use it with his pupils, but other things took priority. Reading "There are also apps that can be purchased, typically for between £10 and £20, that trawl the government website for cancellations" makes me wish I'd made the effort!

We had a similar problem in Sweden when trying to renew passports. A black market developed as covid eased. Everyone was trying at the same time. Some one made a browser extension which repeatedly tried to book appointments. The government implemented a governement ID system before making any bookings. The problem disappeared!

We still have a similar problem trying to get a driving test time. The driving schools book every slot for months ahead. They are commonly referred to as a mafia. You basically cannot get your license without paying a driving school a ton of money.

Sweden is nowadays a low-trust society living in the shell of a former high-trust society. So many processes that are not adapted to the times we live in.

What happened in Sweden to bring about this change?

Something that cannot be openly discussed here for multiple reasons (I agree with some, like flaming).

I think social media and the democratization of the hustle culture that was for a time limited to the US and at most a few big EU cities.

The number of scams, scammy behaviors like dropshipping, scammy advertising like those 'health pills and supplements' (shootout to Logan Paul and Joe Rogan, but we have those in France now) and how becoming rich on the back of trusting people skyrocketed. I think responsability is diluted enough, and this new mentality of "hey, it's not my fault you felt for it, gotta think more, I did and I'm fine, I merit what I got, and you merit to be scammed" makes people less trustworthy.

clue is in paradox of tolerance

Don't you do the driving test at a driving school? I must be misunderstanding something. Driving schools are booking slots from where?

What’s the problem here, it can’t be a technical one? Why is this taking more than a month to solve let alone years?

In many places the system has no flexibility to keep up with demand, especially seasonal demand and supply. In my country (Romania) we have problems with ID, passport or license renewal in the summer when many people (a few millions) working abroad return in vacations and the demand triples for a month or two; also the workers in these government agencies are in vacation, so supply is reduced. This imbalance is temporarily and not corrupt, but it has an impact too.

When I took an extra category on my license it took 6 months to get a slot because motorcycle exams were not programmed from October to March, every year. When my brother did the same, but in the summer, it took 6 weeks to get scheduled. For comparison, for regular driver license (car) it takes usually a week or two.

However in RO there's one slot per person and no name change. The system is simply overwhelmed because they don't have enough people.

With all this talk of intermediaries and reselling of slots, the UK system looks like the corrupted one this time.

Interestingly enough, even in RO the driving school books the slot for the student. Still no reselling of slots.

Romania implements a similar system as described in the article for appointments outside of the country (for example in consulates or embassies). Scalpers book the appointments en-masse and then sell them for 50-200 euros.

There, you can book an appointment and then simply cancel it and it becomes free. So, they have two browsers, in one they cancel the appointment and in the other they book it immediately for the person they're selling to. Or another way is to just send the person to the consulate to say that the the person who booked isn't coming anymore and asked them to take their place.

Similar to a situation in Sweden not long ago, slots for renewing passports and id were booked by bots and then sold on Facebook.

After some outrage in media they finally got their act together and now booking requires an electronic id from the applicant or a guardian.

it seems that it would be enough to just have to specify the name, and not be able to change it, which is the way it works in germany

Yeah I just booked a license test here in Australia and it requires payment at booking time as well as the name of the person taking the test.

I imagine if the person who shows up for the test has a different name to the name given during the booking they won't be allowed to take the test. A license is an ID document too so other forms of ID have to be provided to acquire the license.

Wow, I can't believe no one though about this when the system was created. Here in Poland if one wants a driver's license (or an extra endorsement) one registers a "candidate profile". You then use that candidate profile in a number of ways. For example to register in a driving school, then once they mark your profile as "having done enough hours of driving" you can use it to book the test. You can only book 1 test at a time, then if you fail, you can book another and so on. There is no way to give your slot to someone else. You can cancel of course and rebook providing you do it 24h before, if you're too late they charge you an exam fee anyway.

I always thought this was a needlessly complex and bureaucratic system, but having read this I'm not so sure any more.

I've got my drivers licence over 2 decades ago. Back then the system was exactly the same, but paper based. ~2 years ago I decided to add a (big) motorcycle endorsement. This was right after covid and at the very beginning of the season (they don't do motorcycle tests in winter). I waited about 2 weeks for the test which I considered acceptable. However this was in a fairly small town, perhaps in a huge city this would be very different.

Massachusetts is even worse. The RMV works with companies to screw people over. It gives out most slots to driving schools to begin with.

If you want to get a road test the wait time is over 3 months now. But if you pay a driving school $200 they will schedule you a test in 2 weeks. They do nothing for that money, just schedule you. You also separately pay the RMV the fees for the road test.

All of this for a pro forma 5 minute road test because the testers are now unionized and capped the length of the tests in their contracts. You don't even go on a highway ever or drive on a normal busy city street. If they run behind they just skip even the most basic moves and just have you drive around the block quickly.

I saw some really scary people get a license my day there.

I got my license in Virginia in 1985. No unionization involved and my driving test was 5 minutes driving around the block.

These days in Virginia most people don't take a driving test. Your driving instructor certifies to the state that you have demonstrated the skills required and the state issues a license.

I probably benefitted from this. When I took my test, the driving school booked the exam for me. I failed the first time, and expected to need to wait a month for the next available exam (according to the website) but the school arranged one the following week.

There was no additional cost, so I expect another student wasn't ready and they changed the name to mine.

That's a legitimate reason to allow swapping the name, although it would be fairer if they were forced to cancel the appointment.

What's legitimate about that? That it saves the inefficiency of leaving an empty slot? I'd have thought a system that offers both the same legitimacy and more fairness too would have test bookings arranged in a stack, where cancelled slots get offered to whoever is booked into the proceeding one should they wish to move it forward, or if they don't, then whoever had the next slot booked after that, and so on. So any holes that come up in the schedule get closed pretty quickly, and nobody gets preferential treatment simply because their driving school happened to own the other slots

There is no need for a company to be able to pre-book slots.

If you need an instructor to join you during the exam it can be booked with the instructor AND the test taker's identity.

And here I thought it was inconvenient to head down to the registry office and book a test for a couple days later (Alberta).

Did this headline make anyone else feel like they forgot how to read English overnight?

No, but I'm British.

It doesn't help that the hyphen in "block-book" disappeared somewhere along the line in submission. That is somewhat idiomatic British english.

And there's another British idiom here ("learner drivers").

But this (problem X as pattern Y) is a common British newspaper headline construction (pattern Y is suggested to be responsible for the context in which problem X is occurring).

It is at least a mostly full sentence, though (if in note-form). US headline constructions often feel weird to us because they aren't.

I imagine the US form of this headline might read something like:

"Brokers dominate driving test bookings, applicants driven to black market"

English, by the English, for the English, as it is supposed to be used?

>> It doesn't help that the hyphen in "block-book" disappeared somewhere along the line in submission.

Sorry, that was my edit of the title to make it fit exactly in the space allowed. The full title is:

‘An absolute mess’: learner drivers forced to buy tests on black market as companies block-book slots

If I understand correctly, British newspapers are famous for their head-turning titles. Famous with the British public anyway.

it would seem that profit, like life, always finds a way. Even if the way is exploitation of a system meant to provide people with driving licenses.

The problem is there simply arn't enough tests, companies are booking new tests as soon as they're released because they have no choice.

> companies are booking new tests as soon as they're released because they have no choice

Companies don't need driving tests, individuals need the driving tests. Companies have no business taking them all off the market, leading to the condition that the individuals cannot get any. That isn't how this works, that isn't how any of this works.

Companies don't take tests. There is no reason for a company to book a test. There would be much less pressure on the system if it was only the people taking tests that were booking. I'd bet many of these high price re-sold tests go un-sold because of their price, but still take up the time.

Your statement may be more believable if they didn't resell them...

Woah… this is horrible but also super “evil genius” innovative at the same time. These are people struggling to support themselves and their family

How do you know that?

Snake oil salespeople and actual thieves are also people struggling to support themselves and their family. Who cares?

An arbitrarily restricted resource leads to a failure of the market.

The solution is to have enough slots. How hard can it be, everybody gets an education and exams, why is this suddenly difficult if it involves pricy driving tests?

There can be enough slots and still have them all be booked up by third parties for resale. This is an orthogonal issue.

If they are booked out, there aren't enough slots

Bots can book an infinite amount of slots. Like the parent said, it's an orthogonal problem.

You have a product and bots are willing to buy an infinite amount of it? Tell me again how this is an unsolvable problem.

How can you do capacity planning then for a finite real world space?

You just decide how much money you want to earn and provide capacity for that. Demand is infinite so you will sell whatever you produce.

As a government service, certifying drivers, the goal shouldn't be to earn money right but instead to maximize the number of humans who end up certified.

And then just complain how it’s all a big problem that’s someone else’s fault and can’t be fixed because it’s all so complicated. Right. Sounds like typical government busybody work.

That’s just not true, because it implies a lot of slots go unused and those would then be paid for by the resellers. The solution is to create more slots to meet demand until the resellers can’t pay those costs anymore.

However you do have to accept that then again some slots will go unused and the cost of those will be borne by the party that runs the exams.

But that isn’t a whole lot of cost really because it’s just a small proportion of a room that exists regardless and an attendant that is handsomely paid by the fees.

limited number of expensive cars and expensive one-to-one examiners.

Both driving instruction and tests can be done in the applicant's own vehicle or in the instructor's car, in the UK, so the vehicle isn't the issue.

Examiners were expensive and rare already before 2020, and a hell of a lot of them dropped out in the covid era for health and practicality reasons. Testing and examination was impossible for a period of time and then impractical for a period afterwards which hit the profession.

It caused an enormous backlog of driving tests which I think is not even resolved now.

But also driving instruction and examination is a popular career choice for older people made redundant or "invalided-out" of jobs (particularly in the police or forces). Many of those people did not return when they could, for safety reasons.

It's not an arbitrary restriction; it's largely a post-Covid era scarcity issue.

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