Methodology and sources for the driving test data

The exam percentages come from the Esiti Esami 2025 report by the Ministero delle Infrastrutture e dei Trasporti, Centro Elaborazione Dati, reference year 2025, covering 102 provincial licensing offices across 107 provinces; the practical test results come from table ESAMI PATENTI A e B of the same report, columns PATENTE B / GUIDA. The comparison with 2024 uses the previous edition of that document. Rules quoted in the lessons come from the Italian Highway Code and its implementing regulation, and the questions from the category B exam topics.

The pass rate is the number of tests passed divided by the number of tests taken in the same period, multiplied by one hundred. Theory and practical tests are counted separately, because a candidate can pass the theory and fail the driving test, or resit only one of the two. The two figures are not comparable as measures of difficulty: in 2025 the theory test was passed 60.27 per cent of the time and the practical 83.82 per cent, but only candidates who have already passed the theory reach the practical.

The count is per test, not per candidate. Someone who sits three times counts three times in the denominator. The rate therefore measures the average difficulty of a single attempt, not the chance that a person eventually gets a licence, which is always higher.

Geographic aggregation follows the Motorizzazione Civile office that ran the test, not the candidate's residence. In provinces whose office draws candidates from nearby areas, the figure reflects that shift.

The reason is the small denominator. Where only a few hundred tests are held each year, a change of a few dozen outcomes moves the rate by several percentage points, and the same province can jump from the top to the bottom of a ranking in two consecutive years with nothing having changed about the test.

Rankings should therefore be read with care. Comparison makes sense between provinces of similar volume, or between multi year averages, not between a metropolitan city and a province with a few thousand residents of licensing age.

• The tables loaded on this site are aggregated by province. The MIT also publishes a split between driving school and private candidates, which this site has not loaded yet. No table separates first attempts from resits.
• Changes to provincial boundaries and the creation of metropolitan cities break long time series.
• The ministry may revise figures after first publication. When that happens the pages are recalculated and the check date changes.
• The quiz questions are original, written from the official exam topics. They do not reproduce the ministerial bank word for word, so the wording can differ from what a candidate meets at the test.
• The dataset holds no booking dates and no test dates, so it says nothing about waiting times for the test.

The MIT gives no fixed release date. The latest edition consulted holds the 2025 data: the exam results page shows a last change on 14 April 2026.

A check runs whenever the Ministero delle Infrastrutture e dei Trasporti (MIT) publishes a new year, and at least once a year in any case. The date of the last check is printed at the foot of every page, so a quoted figure stays verifiable over time.

Error reports go to [email protected]. The terms for reusing the figures are the CC BY 3.0 IT (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Italy) terms named above.