An outsourcing with impressive effects. According to several professionals in the driving school sector and inspectors, the number of traffic exam frauds today represents almost one in two applications. According to the regional delegate Snica-FO of the union of inspectors in Brittany, “there is 40% code fraud in France, and we see more and more of it”, she judges in the columns of the Telegram. A trend confirmed by the Road Safety Delegation – without speculating on a figure.
According to these professionals, this increase in fraud is directly linked to a decision taken in 2016 by the State: that of the outsourcing of the examination which was until now supervised by State agents in examination centers dedicated so that inspectors focus on the practical part. Except that, now, operators in the sector are calling on the government to crack down. “We need to carry out a much more massive control”, judges Patrick Mirouse. An opinion shared by Claude Pincemin, president of the “Driving schools” section of the Mobilians union, in Finistère. “We cannot liberalize such a sector, without real controls in the examination centers and a form of ethics”, he judged after Telegram, at the beginning of May.
As of 2016, all state-approved companies can conduct this exam. Since August 2022, there are eight of them: SGS (whose trademark is ObjectifCode), La Poste, Code’nGo! (from Bureau Veritas), Pointcode (from PearsonVue), Dekra, FranceCode, Exacode and Easy Code.
According to Le Télégramme, in some cases, organized networks provide – for a fee – false exam certificates. Sometimes the price of these false documents can reach 1,500 euros. Precisely, a network of this type was dismantled in 2022 between Île-de-France, Jura and Toulouse. According to Patrick Bessone, interviewed by our colleagues, this practice is all the more important as authorized operators outsource their activity. “Some operators call on auto-entrepreneurs to supervise these examinations, which leads to these abuses, while this is not the case for those who only use employees, who are much more identifiable in the event of checks”, details the one who is the National Chair Education and Road Safety within Mobilians.
In other cases, these frauds go through advertisements published on the networks where a third person proposes to pass the code in your place for a sum of several hundred euros. If the crooks risk big, the candidates fraudsters too. Indeed, they may expose themselves to a ban on taking any exams for a maximum of five years. Fraudsters face three years in prison and a fine of 45,000 euros.
Also, if an applicant hasn’t gotten the code in a legitimate way, they’ll tend to need more driving hours. “Without having studied the traffic rules, driving training will take much longer. Fraud does not reduce the price of the permit, quite the contrary,” confirms Claude Pincemin.
