Attitude questions ask what you do when someone else makes it difficult. Tailgating, being tailgated, a driver who will not let you out, a queue that is not moving.
The theme running through them is that being right is not the same as being safe. Following distances, when to give way even though you do not have to, and why flashing your headlights is not a language everyone speaks the same way.
Practise attitude
Questions come from the DVSA revision question bank, used under licence. You will not see whether an answer is right until you have committed to one, which is the point. A sample of every topic is free and needs no account.
Start practisingYour mood is part of the car
You can know every rule in the Highway Code by heart and still be a danger if you drive angry, rushed or out to prove a point. This topic is about the decisions you make when somebody else does something irritating, which on a busy road is most days. It is less about what you are allowed to do and more about what keeps everyone, including you, out of trouble.
When someone else gets it wrong
A driver cuts in. Another sits on your bumper for three miles. Somebody pulls out of a junction and makes you brake. The urge is to show them they were wrong: a long blast of the horn, a gesture, closing the gap so they cannot get in. None of that changes what they did, and all of it raises the chance of the next thing going wrong too.
The calmer response nearly always costs you nothing. Let the tailgater past when you safely can. Drop back from the driver who cut in. Assume the person who pulled out simply did not see you, because most of the time that is exactly what happened.
Signals people misread
Flashing your headlights has one meaning in the Highway Code: letting someone know you are there. In real life people use it to mean "go on", "thank you", "you idiot" and "your lights are off", which is why you should never pull out just because somebody flashed at you. They may have been signalling to someone else entirely.
The horn is the same. It exists to let people know you are there, not to scold them. In towns it is off limits while you are moving from half past eleven at night until seven in the morning, unless someone else's driving puts you in danger.
Patience at crossings and junctions
Older pedestrians taking their time on a zebra crossing, a learner stalling at the lights, a tractor you cannot get past for a mile. All of these test patience, and none of them goes any faster because you creep towards it or rev the engine. A minute lost is a minute lost. A collision is a lot longer.
In the test
These questions often put you in an irritating situation and ask what you do next. The best answer is almost always the one that calms things down rather than the one that wins the argument.
How this topic appears in the real test
The car theory test is 50 multiple choice questions in 57 minutes, and you need 43 correct to pass. The questions are drawn from every topic, so you cannot skip one and hope. There is a hazard perception part as well, and you have to pass both on the same day.
These are revision questions rather than the questions you will be asked on the day.
Other topics
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