The situation of Spanish driving schools does not seem to improve. For some years now, students have faced long waiting lists to be able to start with practical classes and take the exam to obtain a driving license. A situation caused by the lack of examiners in the General Directorate of Traffic and that has caused what was previously one or two months of waiting to become in six, eight and up to twelve months of uncertainty.
The reason given by most driving schools is lack of examiners in the centers of the General Directorate of Traffic. As reported by the Spanish Confederation of Freight Transport (CETM) in a statement, “in some provinces applicants wait up to nine months to be able to take the practical exam.” Faced with this collapse of the system, the CETM has demanded from the DGT “an immediate solution” to be able to solve a problem that affects all Spanish driving schools.
All due to the small number of examiners to evaluate a large number of applicants. A problem that has not improved despite traffic attempts and the announcement of Fernando Grande-MarlaskaMinister of the Interior, in which he assured that he would reinforce the number of places up to sexceed 1,030 available by the end of 2025.
The driving schools with the highest number of failures are penalized by the DGT algorithm
As this is a problem that has been present for several years, Traffic announced in 2021 the implementation of the CAPA systeman algorithm with the ability to distribute and adjust places depending on the number of officials availablethe number of students on the waiting list who have passed the theoretical exam and the passing rate of each center. With this system, the driving schools with the highest number of failures receive a penalty and a smaller number of minutes.
However, even centers with a high percentage of approvals have been affected by this situation. In Madridthe delay time has reached six months on average in some areas, and in Barcelona the waiting list has reached up to 63,000 people waiting to take the practical driving test, exceeding the 85,000 people throughout Catalonia. Despite the fact that, being urban centers with a high population density, they have a greater number of examiners in proportion to smaller provinces, in which the waiting lists are already between two and three months.
A situation that affects both driving schools and students and transportation professionals.
A situation that not only affects those who want to obtain a type B license, but also to transporters that require special certificates and cards to be able to practice. For this reason, the CETM assures that this collapse “represents a critical obstacle to the transport of goods by roadaggravating the shortage of professional drivers and compromising the generational change in the sector.”
Likewise, the driving schools They denounce that the distribution of quotas carried out by the CAPA algorithm is not enough to meet the demand of its students. This means that they cannot carry out their work normally and that their clients find themselves involved in a situation of uncertainty that leaves them affects both personally and professionallysince many require a card to go to their workplace.
At the moment, this situation does not affect the validity of the approved theoretical testWell, this is two years. However, if the upward trend of recent years continues, this could be the next problem that both driving license candidates and driving schools have to face. Therefore, request that the DGT reinforce the measures taken and increase the number of examiners available.