At a press conference on Friday, the agency's General Director Priit Sauk and the Director of the Traffic Service Joel Jesse rejected criticism aimed at them from driving schools.

"The criticism, which was initiated by the Driving Schools Association earlier this week, is largely directed at themselves," said Sauk.

He said the people working in the driving schools were the ones who created the new questions.

The questions were drawn up by three experts as a result of the public procurement, he said. Transport Administration specialists who assessed the suitability of the questions did not find any errors, he argued.

However, Sauk said the agency accepts the criticism that the questions were too hard. They should have been tested more on the target group, he told the media.

"The criticism we have received — that the questions are too difficult, hard to understand, or misleading — is something we accept and acknowledge is likely true. We need to take a closer look at these issues, because what a specialist sees when creating these questions — whether it is representatives from driving schools or our specialists who work with these questions daily — is different. For them, these questions are not difficult," said Sauk.

Today's exam participants are not ready for such complex questions, he added.

Sauk also pointed out an apparent conflict of interest with the person who created the last set of questions in 2019.

"The individual who won the previous tender is the very person publicly criticizing us the most today. They want to prove that they are the only one capable of designing traffic theory exams suitable for the national exam," he said.

He added that the traffic test environments created by this individual were well-aligned with the previous questions.

783 failed test with new questions

Jesse said 783 examinees failed the test with the new questions.

Less than 10 percent of the examinees passed the B-category theory exam – 52 people out of 576.

In the C-category exams, 36 out of 261 examinees passed, 14 percent.

The number was higher in the CE, D and DE category exams, in which the pass rate was 33 percent.

The service was also suspended on Thursday and Friday which meant 474 tests were cancelled.

Jesse noted that there were glitches in the systems while the exam was being administered, which could have also affected the results of the exams.

New questions removed from Monday

From Monday, the agency will remove the new questions from the exam. State fees will be waived for those who took the updated tests, Jesse said.

Sauk added that the new questions are very good, but their wording and comprehensibility must be reviewed.

"We believe that, in fact, there are no errors in the questions; however, there is always room for improvement, and we will address this in the near future," he said.

The agency still aims to change all the questions this year.

"The cooperation has been quite normal so far, but now we've become the subject of some interesting criticism," Sauk concluded, commenting on the situation with the Driving Schools Association.

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