After completing six unsuccessful driving tests in less than three years, I feel as if I know all there is to know about the driving test, except of course how to pass it. I have taken so many lessons and pre-tests, more than 30 at last count, that the instructors are either starting to repeat what I already know or, worse still, confusing me by contradicting things which previous instructors have taught me.

I have memorised whole passages from instruction manuals with modest titles such as John Farlam's You've Passed - A Complete Guide To The Driving Test In Ireland and the PMPA's How To Pass Your Driving Test First Time.

I cannot remember a time when these books, along with their inseparable friend, The Rules Of The Road, weren't in an untidy pile beside my bed, just in case I should wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night wondering under what conditions I should dip my headlights.

With all this preparation, it's not surprising that when the day of the test comes, I always genuinely believe I have a good chance of passing. I drive the five miles or so around Churchtown and Rathgar in Dublin and complete all the various set-piece events, such as the turnabout, reversing around a corner, the rules of the road and the hill start, without any great difficulty.

It's my driving which gives me away every time. I'm a safe driver; I never break the speed limit, I'm observant and I've never had an accident. The problem is that I'm an awkward driver; I occasionally use the wrong gears at the wrong time, have bad road positioning, don't follow the course of the road when turning and do various other things which driving examiners despise.

There is no doubt that redoing the test has made me a better and a safer driver. I have come a long way from the first two tests, when my driving test report was full of squares and boxes denoting serious and potentially dangerous faults. I'm down to a respectable three or four Biro marks for my more recent efforts.

Unfortunately, this is still not good enough. I've always been handed a pink document by the tester called "A Statement of Failure To Pass A Test Of Competency To Drive" when we returned to the test centre. As you can imagine, you don't feel that great about yourself after you've been handed a "statement of failure" by somebody you've known for all of 20 minutes.

I know somebody who saved himself that particular humiliation by pulling in as soon as he realised he had failed and asking the tester to walk the four miles back to the centre. Funnily enough, I would never be that sure that I had failed. I remain optimistic right up the end.

As we park in the centre after completing the test, I have little fantasies of ripping off the L-plates and driving home down the motorway without a care in the world. Of course I do this anyway but, still, it would be nice some day to do it legally. (I would also love to be able to drive abroad, which I can't do on a provisional licence.)

I can't understand why the testers always feel the need to return to the safety of the test centre before they give you your results. Is there a real danger that if they broke the bad news to you in your car, you'd produce a jack from under your seat and beat them to within an inch of their lives?

Another test convention which I can't understand is when the examiner starts the test by saying: "Just drive in your normal way." This same absurd piece of advice is repeated in every one of the 100,000 tests carried out in this country every year.

My blood boils every time I hear it. It makes me feel like responding: "In my normal way? Are you mad? I want to pass the bloody thing. Of course I'm not going to drive in my normal way."

My "normal way of driving" is usually conducted with four children under 10 competing for attention in the back of the car. (Indeed, one of them will probably pass the test before me.)

Sometimes I have even been tempted to respond to this well-intentioned instruction by jamming a Barney tape in the machine, playing it at full volume and sporadically shouting over my shoulder things like: "Shut up or I'll throw those bloody Pokemon cards out the window" or "That's it, daddy's stopping the car and you can all walk home on your own. He's going to live in China where they're not allowed to have big families."

Of course, testers have been trained to use the same stock phrases, so that the department can say, without fear of correction, that everybody gets exactly the same test. To this end, testers are discouraged from being in any way different from each other.

This pursuit of sameness has got out of hand when you realise that all testers sport the same hairstyle and even wear the same type of clothes: comfortable shoes and slacks, a shirt and tie set topped off with an informal but neat rain jacket, colour optional.

And, perhaps most annoyingly, they all speak in the same deadpan, emotionless way.

After failing my fifth test, somebody told me I could now graduate to being tested by a supervisor. I had images of being tested by a worldly-wise maverick who dressed and spoke how he pleased and, most importantly, would see beyond my bad driving and pass me anyway. I duly sent off a begging letter to Athlone and was given a date with a supervisor.

The big day started badly when I went to the wrong test centre and ended up 15 minutes late. When I arrived sweating and out of breath at the supervisor's desk, he was clearly unimpressed by my lack of punctuality. What's more, he had his laminated Rules of the Road ready on the desk and, to my horror, he was wearing the traditional garb of the tester.

It was to be business as usual, no different to all the other tests; the type I had great difficulty in passing. There would be no laughing and joking as we swapped driving test stories, while going for a friendly drive around beautiful Dublin 6. There would be no offers of coffee, no consoling hugs and he hadn't brought his Bob Dylan tape for us to enjoy during the test.

And so, half-an-hour later, I duly left the centre with another "statement of failure" to add to my collection, and I started to think that I may never pass the test.

I may have to spend the rest of my life congratulating family members, friends, workmates, neighbours and some people who are not even old enough to vote or drink alcohol, as they pass the test with ease.

The Department of the Environment will tell you that it is unusual for somebody to have as much difficulty passing the test as I have had. The majority of people, 55.1 per cent, pass their test first time and, after their first test, most people find it easier to pass, with a very healthy 59.3 per cent of "non-first time applicants" being successful.

Already, 150,000 Irish people have passed in the three years since I started doing the test. Would I still have the courage to turn up at the test centre when that number reaches a million?

Interestingly enough, the department has no statistics available on whether people are more likely to pass their seventh test than their sixth test. I have a suspicion that this may be because most people give up after their third pink paper and get on with their lives.

Kevin Burns is a producer with RTE radio