Safety check, class B

This belongs to the practical test, not the theory test

The Norwegian driving test opens with the examiner asking you to check a part of the car. You have to demonstrate and explain — a different exam from the theory test, and a different skill. You do not pass it by reading about it; you pass it by having done the movements before.

The theory behind each check is in the theory course and is not repeated here. What is here is the performance: the order of the movements, and the sentence you say while making them. A correct check done in silence is half an answer.

The 6 areas

The examiner picks the tasks from these. All 44 are open at the safety check, with drawings of the parts you have to point at:

• Weights and cargo — what the car may tow, payload, roof load and securing the load
• Tyres and wheels — tread depth, size, load index and speed rating, pressure, studded tyres
• Lights and lamps — brake lights, hazards, dipped beam, fog lights, parking lights, indicators
• Brakes — servo, brake fluid, the two brake circuits, the warning lamps, ABS
• Steering — power steering, play in the steering, and what you hear or feel when something is wrong
• Safety equipment and the rest — warning triangle, hi-vis vest, seatbelts, airbag, oil, wipers and washers

Every task has the same shape

Ask is the examiner's own wording. Show is the hand movements in order — this is what is being marked. Say is the sentence you speak while doing it. Several tasks also carry the follow-up question, the one the examiner asks once you have shown the check.

44 tasks is far more than you will be given on the day, but you do not know which ones you will get. Work through the area you are least sure of, and make the movements on a real car while you read — that is the difference between knowing the answer and being able to show it.

The numbers are checked against the regulations

The tread-depth rule shows why precision matters: 3 mm applies during a calendar period — from 1 November to and including the first Sunday after Easter Monday, and from 16 October to 30 April in Nordland, Troms and Finnmark. Outside that period the limit is 1.6 mm. It applies to whatever tyre is on the car, not only to one sold as a winter tyre.

Where the regulations set no number, none is stated here. The warning triangle has no fixed distance in Norwegian law — the requirement is that traffic coming up behind gets enough time to react.