Before the drive
The vehicle check that happens before your road test starts
This one computes nothing, because there is no published figure to compute with. It is a list of the checks that apply wherever in Canada you are testing, and the ticks stay in your own browser.
Work through it
Checks done0 of 13
13 still to go. The ticks stay in this browser, so you can start tonight and finish in the parking area tomorrow.
The vehicle has to be legally on the road before anyone drives it anywhere. An expired plate, a plate that does not match the vehicle, or insurance you cannot produce ends the appointment in the parking area, before the examiner has watched you drive a metre.
The examiner will ask you to switch them on and may ask for high beam. A burnt out bulb is a safety defect on a vehicle you brought, and the test does not start on a vehicle with one.
This is the one nobody checks alone, because you cannot see it from the driver seat. Get someone to stand behind the car while you press the pedal, or back up towards a shop window and watch the reflection.
Signalling is graded on nearly every manoeuvre in a road test, so a dead signal bulb makes the drive unmarkable. A bulb that has failed also makes the remaining one flash faster, which is the easiest warning to spot.
It is the only way you can warn another road user, so it counts as required equipment rather than a convenience. It takes one second to test and it is checked often.
A road test can include stopping and starting on a slope, and securing the vehicle at the end. A parking brake that has gone slack will not hold the car, and that is both a fault on the drive and a reason to refuse the vehicle.
Damage in front of the driver blocks the view and spreads without warning. Damage low in a corner is usually a different matter, but anything in the swept area where you are looking is the part that gets a vehicle turned away.
You cannot pick the weather on test day. If it rains and the wipers smear or the washer bottle is empty, you are driving a vehicle you cannot see out of, and the appointment does not go ahead.
Mirror checks are watched throughout a road test, and the examiner needs a view too. A mirror that is cracked, missing or swinging loose means the observation the test is built around cannot be done.
The examiner sits beside you and has to belt in. A frayed belt, a jammed retractor or a buckle that will not catch stops the appointment, and a belt with visible damage counts as not working even when it clicks.
Both front doors need to work from both sides. It is not about comfort, it is about whether someone can get out, or be got out, in a hurry. A door held shut with a trick is a refused vehicle.
Speed control is graded on the whole drive, and you cannot control what you cannot read. A speedometer stuck on zero makes the drive unmarkable, whatever the rest of the vehicle is like.
A soft or damaged tire changes how the vehicle steers and stops, which is exactly what is being measured. This is also the check most likely to save you rather than the examiner: pressures fall in cold weather and nobody notices.
Why this list exists
An examiner walks around the vehicle before the drive, and what they are looking for is not whether the car is nice.
What they are looking for is whether the car is legal, whether it is safe for two people to sit in for half an hour, and whether the equipment the test grades you on actually works. A vehicle that fails that walk around does not get a shorter test, it gets no test, and in most cases you lose the appointment and the money that came with it.
The frustrating part is how ordinary the failures are. A bulb, a wiper blade, a belt that will not latch. Every one of them is a ten minute job the week before, and none of them is something you notice from the driver seat on the morning itself. So do the walk around before the examiner does.
What this list is, and what it is not
Your licensing authority has the final word
Every item above is a check that applies wherever in Canada you are testing, which is exactly why we kept the list to those. Each province and territory publishes its own vehicle requirements, and some add conditions of their own: a particular kind of vehicle, a rule about a rental or a borrowed car, a requirement about who owns it. The office you are booked with works from its own list, not ours, so read theirs as well.
We have left out anything we could not state for the whole country. Where a rule differs by province, saying nothing is more useful than saying something that turns out to be wrong at your office. If you are not sure whether the car you plan to use qualifies at all, the licensing office will tell you before the day, and that call costs nothing.
The ticks are stored in this browser and nowhere else. There is no account, nothing is sent to us, and clearing your browser data clears the list. That is not a limitation we are apologising for, it is how the whole site works.
Where to go next
The paperwork a driver carries
What has to be in the vehicle with you, why an examiner asks for it, and what happens when it is missing.
The Ontario G1 knowledge test
The test that comes before any road test, what Ontario publishes about it, and a free simulation of it.
Novice driver restrictions
Whether the drive to the test centre itself is one your current licence allows you to make.