I remember discussing how tough and unfair the test was with my last driving instructor (fortunately a young guy in his 20s who was pretty with it) and he said there was no ideal way of assessing whether someone is truly ready to be given a full licence, it wouldn't be realistic to get an examiner to travel with a learner over many hours (over various seperate days), so having you have to fit it all into a 1 hour test and get everything right (in real life, most people make tiny errors all the time). They seem to be making it more and more stringent, but still it doesn't seem to prevent hooligans from getting onto the road. Some people I've known say that with the amount of dickheads on the road at the moment the test obviously isn't tough enough.

It's just something in life you have to get past if you want the privilige of driving in Britain (now I've got my licence I don't want to lose it and go through the whole bloody process again) just like the way you have to pass silly job interviews for jobs, although some people get put off from driving after they fail 3 times or so.