Project Goal
The goal of this project is to harmonize the standards of execution of the theoretical part of the driver's test in Croatia, in the technical-technological sense, with the standards applied in the countries of the European Union. The wish is also to modernize and improve the way and organization of execution of the theoretical part of the driver's test, to increase the level of knowledge of driver candidates, to determine the minimum standards of the execution, to increase the reliability of the results, to reduce time for solving the test, and to reduce the costs of test materials and labour hours of examiners.
This project ensures the selection of tests by random choice, elimination of possible negative elements connected with execution of tests, such as possible misuse, subjectivity in grading, copying, etc. Archiving the test results enables momentary results for each candidate, detailed analyses of the results by examiners, test centres, driving schools, lecturers, test groups, test questions and momentary disposing with the data about passing of the tests, and thus also with feedback information which will enable permanent checking of the system state.
The Croatian Automobile Club (Hrvatski autoklub - HAK), as the authorized professional organization, started technological modernization of taking the tests, i.e. the driver candidates tests on a computer. The System of Taking Driver's Test on Computer was presented to the public in the premises of the Croatian Automobile Club in Zagreb on 31 July, 2007. Introduction of the system consists of two phases, the pilot phase, which should last up to six months, and, after that, the phase of implementation of the system in all 23 test centres.
Pilot project
The execution of the test on a computer as the pilot project started on 17 September, 2007 in two test centres, in Zagreb and Šibenik. There was a DEMO system arranged concurrently, which was installed on the HAK's website, (www.hak.hr), with the instructions, in order to enable the candidates to get acquainted with the system and try the way of taking the test. The interest in such a way of taking the test is also shown by the number of persons accessing the system on HAK's web site. For the period from 04 August to 21 December, 2007, there have been 42,572 persons that approached the demo system, from which 55.27 percent passed the test. The average duration of the test is about 5 minutes. According to the gender, 42.90 percent of those that accessed the system were female, and 57.10 percent were male.
The first results of the pilot project are very encouraging. Until now, 3,093 tests have been executed, and the average rate of passing has been 61.33 percent. That is also confirmed by the opinions of the candidates, as well as the results of the opinion poll which candidates fill in after the executed test.
The system for taking tests on a computer considerably increases efficiency, safety and objectivity of the testing procedure. There are numerous advantages in relation to the existing way of execution. The possibility of a human error is minimum (or accidental or intentional) because the test is graded automatically, according to a unified and predefined criterion which controls the system. The possibility of misuse, manipulation and cheating is reduced because the testing procedure is recorded, the chosen answers to questions are recorded in the system and the system decides about the result, and not the examiner. The driver candidate can get the test results momentarily, i.e. at the moment when the examiner wants to present them to him/her because the result is known and written down in the system at the moment when the test is finished. In the same way, the candidate can see the correct answers to questions immediately after taking the test with exactly determined time of checking.