Is scrapping the full driver licence test unsafe?
Wednesday, 4 February 2026
ANALYSIS: Transport Minister Chris Bishop was careful not to promise road safety nirvana as he announced the end of the full licence test on Tuesday.
“All of these things by definition are a balance,” Bishop said.
“It’s like everything in life. You could make getting your driver licence as difficult as possible, as fiendishly hard as you would like, and you would probably achieve better road safety outcomes. But that would be bad for New Zealand and bad for access to jobs and employment and all the other things that you want to have happen.”
On the face of it, removing any practical test seems likely to have an overall negative effect on road safety - even if getting a full licence only allows you drive at night and with others in the car.
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A Government study in 2019 found that full-licence drivers were 23% less likely to crash than restricted driver holders. Now you can’t say that it only studying and passing this test that made these drivers safer - after all restricted drivers are generally younger and newer drivers, by their nature less experienced.
But there is some evidence that the “hazard perception” element in the full test is a useful barrier - one Queensland study revealed drivers who failed a hazard perception test were 25% more likely to crash in the year following.
AA: Giving teeth to demerit points is crucial
Despite all this, AA road safety manager Dylan Thomsen said his organisation was broadly on board with the reforms.
That is because the removal of the full test comes with a bevy of other measures that Thomsen thinks will do a lot to increase road safety. Those measures include:
Doubling the time that an under-25-year-old must spend on their learner licence from six to 12 months (with a possible reduction via a specified number of training hours)
Restricted drivers must spend at least 12 months on their restricted if under 25 and six months if over - with no option to reduce this as they currently can with a defensive driving course
Drivers will have six months added to their restricted licence period if they get any demerit points
All learner and restricted licence holders will have a zero alcohol limit (previously the zero alcohol restriction was on under 20s)
International research has suggested that a two-year clean driving record was the best predictor of crash reduction, so the demerit point system could be a quite serious restraint on bad drivers getting licences.
Thomsen said it was good to properly punish bad driving behaviour on the restricted test.
He noted that New Zealand was relatively rare in having a full licence test but that many other countries with lower crash rates - but no full licence test - required more hours of driver training.
“New Zealand has one of the worst crash rates amongst developed countries. And the age group with the highest crash rate is 16-25-year-olds,” Thomsen said.
New Zealand's road fatality rate of 6.8 deaths per billion kilometres travelled is very high - 39% higher than Australia's 4.9, and more than double the UK's 3.0 deaths per billion km.
Push to make training hours mandatory
The AA pushed the Government to make supervised training hours a mandatory requirement for getting a restricted test, rather than just a way to get the period down, but the Government did not opt for this.
“We think this package strikes a good balance. But we would have done it slightly differently - if we were going to have the ideal for road safety we would have liked to see all learner drivers having to do a certain amount of supervised drives.”
The Regulatory Impact Assessment shows public servants did consider this and thought it would have a positive road safety benefit, but would make the overall system less efficient and more expensive.
It noted that while most Australian states require logged hours of supervised driving these states also publicly fund driving courses. Victoria, for example, has a young driver training program available to any young person without a driver who can supervise them.
New Zealand’s equivalent scheme, launched by the last Government in 2023, has a more opaque eligibility criteria, and is generally focused on people receiving benefits. (Still it has helped 34,000 people get a licence so far.)
Public servants: Changes will increase road safety
The advice from public servants concluded that as a package the changes would increase road safety relative to the status quo.
“The Ministry’s advice did not suggest the changes would reduce safety outcomes. It expected the strengthened learner and restricted-period measures to offset possible negative effects of removing the full licence test, and noted that the extension to the learner period - with the option to decrease this with supervised hours or an approved course - is likely to improve road safety outcomes,” Bishop told The Post.
“Final safety advice is still being prepared as part of the rule‑ making process.”
Labour’s transport spokesman Tangi Utikere was cautiously supportive of the move, meaning it is unlikely to shift ahead of implementation in 2027, whoever wins the election.
'We need to see the evidence backing this decision, but support the lower costs for licences. People need to be mobile for work and with many jobs requiring a full licence removing cost as a barrier makes sense. Road safety can't be compromised by any changes,' Utikere said.
But that doesn’t mean the new system is set in stone - a three year review process is built in, meaning if crashes are shown to be getting worse, New Zealand could go back or face further reform.
And it is also worth noting that there was nothing stopping the Government making its changes to the learner and restricted tests without getting rid of the full test at all.