How to fail your driving test

I have just joined the majority of 58.8% of people who took their test at my local test centre (which I shall leave anonymous for safety reasons) and failed. I personally feel the word "fail" is a bit too strong, I'd prefer not pass or slightly unsuccessful. Now many of you, including my parents and close friends, will boast about how you passed first time and how I am an inferior driver to you. Fair enough, but in my defence there are a few variables which led to my failure, or as you might call them "excuses";

1) I am not a girl, I do not have the necessary physical attributes to distract the examiner for 40 minutes.

2) Buses are the work of evil. They park terribly and pull out in front of you when you least expect them to. A bus decided to pull out in front of me and stop for passengers in the middle of the road. Now, if I was designing roads I would put bus stops in areas away from traffic islands and parked cars, thankfully I did manage to get round with great difficulty after a slight hesitation = 1 x minor fault.

3) Signalling. I was penalised for signalling too early, despite many of you experienced road users not knowing how to use indicators correctly. The place where most road users enrage me is at roundabouts, a lot of you simply assume that once you're on the roundabout there's no need to signal, its the driving equivalent of letting your dog foul on the pavement and leaving it up so others others can step in it. Road users need to foresee the direction you intend to move in otherwise they'll get really cheesed off, swear and then cause accidents. I propose new forms of traffic policing where road users get punished for not signalling or randomly stopping and turning in the most inappropriate of places. I'm not suggesting a fine or removal or driving bans, I'd like to see those who disrupt and hinder the driving experience of other road users to be forced to warn others of their imbecility by adorning their cars with purple flashing lights.

So what was my major failure? I hear you ask. Reversing around a corner sounds fairly straight forward, I had successfully completed it many a time before without problems, but when faced with an uneven curvature of the kerbside and impatient van driver, the stress and pressure may have led me to get a bit too close to the kerb, Being a careful and concious person, I corrected my mistake, twice in fact, unfortunately it led me to drift across to the area examiners call "THE LINE" a zone where type B license test sitters (or testees) are forbidden to go.

So what have I learnt from my failure experience? Not much, many of my fellow failures have called the examiners the most profane of words, but I shall refrain from doing so. I had a top bloke called Andy, he enjoyed making conversation and I found out he rides a motorbike and tests learner motorcyclists without dying in the process, which is always a benefit. He said I was excellent at going forwards, which I took as a compliment, and I left safe in the knowledge that even F1 drivers don't engage reverse gear too often, they get people to push them back into the pits.