Aspiring young drivers in the Okanagan are having troubles with booking their driving tests.
Patrick Turner is a 19-year-old tire technician in Penticton but he’s missing one important thing that auto trade workers need — his driving licence.
“I had my road test booked, they never sent me an email canceling it, but I couldn’t go because they shut down all the appointments,” said Patrick Turner.
“My L flipped over and expired, I couldn’t book another one.”
The young Penticton auto shop worker had his “new” drivers test booked but was cancelled due to the pandemic, and because ICBC was not rebooking tests, his learner’s licence expired.
Turner will now have to wait until Sept. 14 to retake his learners test before he can even book a new drivers road test.
He had his original new drivers road test scheduled back in May.
ICBC resumed scheduling road tests this week. The public insurer’s online booking system opened Monday for anyone who didn’t have a previous road test cancelled.
Unfortunately for Patrick, his previous road test will not count as he no longer has his learner’s licence.
More than 24,000 new ICBC test bookings have been made since Monday.
Patrick says if he could tell ICBC one thing it would be to reevaluate the online system.
“That wait times are just extreme right now because they have some really weird system in place for booking people,” said Turner.
“It’s really inconvenient for everyone.”
One Penticton high school student said his experience trying to rebook his “N” test was a bit of a wild goose chase, as well.
“It’s been really slow, the website kept crashing when I was trying to book the road test,” said Josh Spence.
“When I did book it, it was in Salmon Arm.”
ICBC has said it has taken steps to address the backlog of road tests hiring 100 more examiners but wait times are still more than what is expected.
“It’s made my patience go down a lot with ICBC because I went from having to get it before summer to getting it at the end of summer.”
Whether people are waiting to book, or waiting to take the test — long wait times should be expected for everything.
ICBC did give Global News a statement about the issue of backlogged driver tests.
“We know there are months of built up demand and we are doing our best to handle all the booking requests, but we ask that people be patient,” wrote ICBC staff in an email.
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