Pulling Up on the Right: The Manoeuvre Most Learners Forget

#What is pulling up on the right?

The examiner asks you to pull up on the right-hand side of the road, behind any parked vehicles if there are any, then reverse back two car lengths and rejoin the traffic when it is safe. The DVSA introduced this manoeuvre in December 2017 alongside the bay-park-and-leave variations. The reason: most drivers will, at some point, need to stop on the opposite side of a residential street to drop someone off or pick up a parcel. The test now checks you can do that safely.

The whole exercise takes about 90 seconds. It does not feel difficult once you have practised it three or four times. The problem is that most lesson packages cover it once, near the end of the course, and then move on. Bay park gets twenty repetitions; pulling up on the right gets two. Then the examiner picks it on test day and the candidate is essentially attempting it cold.

#The full step-by-step

Read this once, then practise it on a quiet residential road with your instructor or a qualified supervising driver. Do not attempt this manoeuvre for the first time on test day.

The two failure points are predictable. First, the reverse is too fast or too curved, and the car drifts away from the kerb. Second, the move-off is rushed: the candidate signals and pulls out without a full all-round observation, and the examiner marks a serious fault for failing to check for following traffic. Either of those, and the test ends regardless of the rest of the drive. Pulling up on the right is genuinely binary in this way.

#What the examiner is actually marking

Three things, in priority order. Observation, control, and accuracy. Observation matters most because the consequence of getting it wrong is real harm to other road users. Control matters because the examiner needs to see you can manage the clutch (in a manual) without stalling, and steer slowly without grabbing the wheel. Accuracy matters least, the kerb does not need to be perfectly straight, just close enough that the car is not creating a hazard.

A common misconception is that the manoeuvre is graded primarily on how well you park. It is not. You can finish slightly out from the kerb and still pass. What you cannot do is reverse without a proper shoulder check, or pull away again without checking your blind spot. Those are immediate-fail observations. The serious vs minor faults guide sets out exactly which categories are absolute and which are subject to clustering.

#Why this manoeuvre catches so many candidates

The honest answer is preparation imbalance. Driving instructors, on the whole, drill bay parking and parallel parking far more than the right-side stop. Bay parking comes up at the test centre car park itself, so candidates can see exactly where they will perform it and want the practice. Parallel parking has been part of the test for decades and lesson plans built up around it long before 2017. Pulling up on the right is the newest of the three and the one with the least intuitive technique. Most learners simply do not get enough repetitions on it.

The other reason: the manoeuvre crosses oncoming traffic to start, then re-crosses the road to leave. Both crossings require active observation rather than the procedural check-and-go that bay parking uses. If your normal driving habit is to glance at mirrors rather than properly read traffic in both directions, pulling up on the right exposes that. Examiners can tell the difference between a candidate who looks because they remember to and one who looks because they mean to. The mirror-signal-manoeuvre routine is the underlying habit this manoeuvre relies on.

Cyclists and motorcyclists are the specific risk this manoeuvre is checking. A bicycle filtering through stationary traffic on the right side of the road can be invisible from a single mirror glance. The shoulder check before reversing, and the second one before pulling away, is what catches them. Skip either, and you are creating exactly the situation the manoeuvre exists to prevent.

#How to practise it properly

Pick a quiet residential road with light traffic. Cul-de-sacs are too quiet, the manoeuvre is supposed to involve oncoming vehicles. A residential through-road with maybe one car every minute is ideal. Drive past one or two parked vehicles on the opposite side, signal right, cross when clear, stop just behind the parked car, and reverse two lengths. Then rejoin. Repeat ten times in a single session.

After the tenth repetition, the procedure becomes automatic. That is the goal. On test day you do not want to be thinking through five steps. You want your hands and eyes doing the right thing while your conscious attention is on traffic. Five days before your test, do another session of ten repetitions to refresh the muscle memory. The combined hour of practice will make the difference between a routine pass and a manoeuvre-induced fail.

#On test day: what to expect

The examiner will say something like, "When it is safe, please pull up on the right-hand side of the road. Then reverse two car lengths and continue when it is safe to do so." They will then sit back and let you do it. They will not coach you mid-manoeuvre. If you start drifting away from the kerb, they will let it happen and mark accordingly. If you forget the shoulder check, they will note it.

There is no requirement to perform the manoeuvre in a specific spot, the examiner will not pick a tricky location. They will tell you when there is a suitable place coming up, or simply ask you to do it when you reach a safe point. If the road they ask you to use looks too busy, you can say so. They will accept "I would prefer to find a quieter spot if that is OK", and they will reissue the instruction further along the route.

After the manoeuvre, you carry on driving as normal. The examiner does not give you a pass-or-fail signal. Your job is to keep the same standard of observation and control for the remaining 25 to 30 minutes of the test. Many candidates relax mentally after a successful manoeuvre and pick up faults in the post-manoeuvre driving. Do not let that be you. The test day morning routine covers how to keep your concentration intact across the full route.

#How this manoeuvre fits the bigger picture

You will be asked to perform one of the three DVSA manoeuvres. Around 1 in 3 tests get pulling up on the right. The other two are bay parking (forward or reverse, with a leave-the-bay element) and parallel parking. There is no way to predict which one your examiner will pick, so all three need to be at a confident standard before you book. The manoeuvres overview guide covers each in turn, and the reverse bay park step-by-step and parallel park guide go deeper on the other two.

About 1 in 3 tests also includes the emergency stop, which is separate from the standard manoeuvre and not in rotation with it. If you are unlucky, you will get the emergency stop and pulling up on the right in the same test. That is rare but it does happen, and it is entirely manageable if you have practised both. The emergency stop guide walks through the technique. Treating each manoeuvre as automatic before test day is the best protection against the test-day combination you did not predict.

#Sources and further reading

The figures, fees, and procedures referenced in this article are verifiable on the official gov.uk pages below. PassRates.uk is built on the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency’s open data, published under the Open Government Licence.

• Driving test (gov.uk)
• If you fail your driving test (gov.uk)
• Change or cancel your driving test (gov.uk)
• Driving test manoeuvres (gov.uk)
• Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (gov.uk)
• Open Government Licence v3.0 (nationalarchives.gov.uk)