There are more than a thousand different questions in the theory test for the driver's license. Only a few dozen come off it. But which? To learn so many correct answers is tedious. Professionals complain that more and more learners cheat using miniature cameras and earplugs.
The trick: In his cheat attempt, the learner driver wears a mini camera in his buttonhole. So the questions are transferred to a friend or acquaintance outside. This whispers the candidate the answers via a mini plug in the ear. There are companies that advertise on the Internet specifically that you can cheat successfully with their devices in the driving test.
How many learners actually use this scam is not known. The driving instructor and lawyer Arne Böhne of TÜV Rheinland estimates: Extrapolated to Germany would be revealed each year about 1600 such cases. "Twenty years ago, when we did not have this sophisticated technology, there might have been only a tenth of that many cases," he says. Böhne suspects that the number of unsuccessful candidates in the thousands.
Anyone caught is not expected to have much to worry about: cheating is neither an offense nor a misdemeanor. "These people can be banned for a maximum of six months before the next exam," said Böhne.
Should cheating become a crime?
Driving motorists on the road who do not know all the rules is a risk, as Dieter Quentin, the chairman of the German Association of Driving Instructor Associations in Berlin, points out. "We demand that you create a criminal offense here." Is the federal government considering this or at least the classification as an administrative offense? "So far, there are no such considerations in the Federal Ministry of Justice," the ministry said. The extent to which delusions in examinations under the individual circumstances are punishable, prosecutors and courts should judge.
The spokeswoman for the Ministry of Transport of Rhineland-Palatinate, Susanne Keeding, says that if such deceptions were punishable, even students taking lessons in the Baccalaureate could become criminals. Deceptive candidates in theory would still have to pass the practical test where the traffic rules are also in demand. Although the technology to deceive is getting better - but also the technology to uncover the cheating.
In fact, auditors today often collect the phones of the candidates and use a detector. "But he does not save the world," says Arne Böhne of TÜV Rheinland. "The detector can not cover all radio frequencies." The Federal Network Agency does not play with jammers. Examiners should not examine specimens on technology on the body. Böhne: "We can only call the police for that."