The short answer
The practical test has no points account. It ends early on mistakes that endangered other people or would have: ignoring priority, crossing a red light, clearly excessive speed, dangerous overtaking — and any intervention by the instructor at the wheel or the pedals. Everything else is weighed rather than counted.
The theory test has error points. The practical one does not, which confuses people, because it means you neither have "two mistakes left" nor are you lost after the first.
The one thing they share
Every mistake that ends the drive immediately endangered somebody else, or would have if that somebody had not been paying attention. That is the criterion — not how untidy something looked.
What belongs on the list
- Ignoring priority or right of way, even when nothing happened
- Crossing the stop line on red
- Clearly too fast, especially at pedestrian crossings, near schools and in 30 km/h zones
- Overtaking without enough visibility or with too little clearance
- Cutting across a cyclist while turning — the most common endangering mistake in a city like Düsseldorf
- Any intervention by the instructor at the wheel or the pedals
Why the intervention counts
Because it answers the question the test is asking: if somebody has to intervene, then at that moment the car was not being handled safely. Whether and when the instructor may intervene is set out in a post of its own.
What does NOT belong on it
A botched parking manoeuvre, a stalled engine, an untidy line, pulling away too hesitantly at a light. Those are mistakes, they get noted, and several of them together can add up to a fail — but none of them ends the drive on the spot.
The drive does not stop abruptly at the roadside. As a rule you drive back to the test centre, and that is ten or fifteen very quiet minutes. We tell our students beforehand, because otherwise that journey back feels like a second punishment. It is not one — it is simply the way back.
And then?
The examiner tells you directly what it came down to. There is no waiting period before the next attempt in the sense many people assume — what limits you is the next free slot and the question of how many lessons make sense before it. What happens next is set out separately.
Which charges arise again on a retake is in "Test fees" — the rates themselves on the price page.
What to take away
A single ugly moment does not end a test. What ends it is endangering somebody — which is why the most effective preparation is not tidy parking but being slow enough to still stop anywhere.