The restricted licence test
A Class 1 candidate in New Zealand sits two separate practical exams, months or years apart, and the one most people mean by “my driving test” is the first of them: the restricted licence test. This page covers that test only, and says plainly where it stops.
One of two
The restricted licence test is the first of two practical exams
A Class 1 candidate sits this exam before a restricted licence, and a second, later exam — the full licence test — before a full one. This page covers the restricted licence test only.
The restricted licence test runs in two stages inside the one sitting: a shorter opening stage, then the longer main drive. Both are marked by the same testing officer, in the same appointment.
Time and outcome
45 minutes, and no more than 2 critical errors
Time allotted
45 minutes
Critical errors allowed, whole test
2
That two-error cap is for the test as a whole. The opening stage carries its own, stricter limit on top of it — a candidate can fail on the opening stage alone, before the main drive even begins, on fewer errors than the whole-test cap allows. NZTA's own written guide to this test does not itself state a fault count at all; the figures above come from drive.govt.nz's separate page on critical errors.
NZTA and drive.govt.nz name two grades between them for this test — critical error and immediate failure error. The one counted above is the critical error; the more serious of the two ends the test immediately, with none of that grade allowed at all.
Neither fault count above is written into the Rule
Clause 51 says only that a candidate passes "a practical test approved by the Director" by passing it "to the standard determined by the Director" — no fault count, and no qualitative description of what counts as a fail. Both numbers above are NZTA's and drive.govt.nz's own published figures for how that standard is applied, not a quotation from the Rule.
Land Transport (Driver Licensing) Rule 1999 (SR 1999/100), cl 51
Source — drive.govt.nz (Waka Kotahi) guidance pages — retrieved 18 August 2026
Getting ready
No minimum number of practice hours
The Rule does not set a minimum number of supervised driving hours before this test. What it does require is a supervisor: whoever sits beside a learner must hold a full New Zealand car licence and have held it for at least two years. There is no attached hour count, whatever a driving school's own advice on practice time might suggest.
No required number of practice hours before this test
The Rule's own hour-related provisions are about the TEST's length and about how long an endorsement stays valid — not about how much practice a learner needs first. Clause 16(1)(a) is the closest thing to a practice condition, and it is a WHO condition (an appropriately experienced supervisor), not a HOW-LONG one.
Land Transport (Driver Licensing) Rule 1999 (SR 1999/100), cl 16(1)(a)
Retaking
No wait and no cap on attempts
Unlike the theory test's same-day rule, the Rule sets no mandatory waiting period at all before you may book another restricted licence test attempt, and no cap on how many times you may sit it.
Source — Land Transport (Driver Licensing) Rule 1999 (SR 1999/100) — "Latest version as at 06 August 2026", retrieved 18 August 2026
After this test
The full licence test comes later, and is a separate exam
Passing the restricted licence test does not finish the process. After holding a restricted licence for the required period, a candidate sits a second, separately structured practical exam — the full licence test — before moving to a full licence. It has its own pass standard, set out on NZTA's own pages rather than in this test's guidance, and this site does not carry a fault-count figure for it: neither of NZTA's published pages for that exam states one, at least not in what we have been able to confirm. Rather than print a number from somewhere else and imply it belongs to that exam, this page simply does not model it.