Women drivers continue to outperform men apart from in Derry and a few other locations
Women drivers continue to outperform men apart from at a small number of locations in the North, including Derry, new statistics have shown.
The rolling four-quarter average pass rate for men for practical driving tests taken from the Altnagelvin test centre was 50.2 per cent, while for women it was 47 per cent.
For both genders together the pass rate was 48.7 per cent over the past year.
This bucks a trend being exhibited across the North as a whole where women are now consistently outperforming men when it comes to practical driving tests.
Figures contained in the latest ‘DfI Driver, Vehicle, Operator, and Enforcement Statistics Quarter Four: January to March 2026’ report show only five test centres had higher four-quarter average pass rates for males than females.
The authors of the bulletin note that up until the pandemic there was a clear ‘gender-gap’ in favour of males based on a four-quarter rolling average.
However, ‘since driving testing resumed in the summer of 2020, this gap has narrowed considerably and remained much lower throughout 2022/23, to the end of 2023/24 and into the third quarter of 2025/26’.
It is now the case that women are outperforming men, apart from a few test centres, including Derry.
"To the end of March 2026, the rolling four-quarter average car test pass-rate for males was 0.2 percentage points lower than for females, at 52.3 per cent and 52.4 per cent respectively; this compares with 56.2 per cent and 55.3 per cent to the end of March 2025, and 54.1 per cent and 53.4 per cent to March 2024.
“October to December 2025 was the first time since records were collated that female pass rates have exceeded males for practical car driving tests in a rolling 12-month period and this quarter has seen this difference maintained. It will be interesting to see if this trend continues into 2026/27 and beyond.
"Based on the same four-quarter rolling average, pass-rates for private car testing for females were higher than those for males in 10 testing centres, with the highest percentage point differences in Armagh (65.8 per cent against 58.4 per cent) and Hydebank (44.4 per cent against 41 per cent),” the bulletin reveals.