does canada's worst driver lose their license
In each season, eight drivers and their nominators-- Canada's Worst Driver 11 had nine drivers; more on this later-- are enrolled at the Driver Rehabilitation Centre where they compete in challenges designed to improve their driving skills, in an effort to not be named Canada's Worst Driver. In the first challenge, the contestants begin at a location about an hour's drive from the Driver Rehabilitation Centre. Following the directions that are given, each contestant must drive to the Driver Rehabilitation Centre where, upon arriving, the driver's license of each contestant is confiscated (for the first two seasons, their car keys were confiscated instead). The first episode concludes with an obstacle course or assessment challenge, meant to evaluate the skills of each driver. The series is well known for its obstacle course challenges. Contestants must routinely maneuver their cars through tight spaces with less than an inch of clearance on either side. To show that the challenge can be done without hitting obstacles by an average driver, host Andrew Younghusband, himself an average driver, performs each challenge before any contestant attempts said challenge. At the end of each episode, starting with the second episode of each season, each contestant meets with Andrew and a panel of four experts for an evaluation of his or her performance. After all remaining contestants are interviewed, the experts and Andrew deliberate on which contestant and nominator pair have improved enough to graduate from the Driver Rehabilitation Centre. The driver who has graduated is eliminated from the competition and is sent home with his or her license returned to him or her. Typically, the contestants drive off with their nominators in the car that they used to arrive at the Driver Rehabilitation Centre. During the series, the experts also reserve the right to not graduate anyone during an episode or to graduate multiple contestants at the same time. The experts may also choose to expel any contestant prematurely who does not show any incentive to learn, who they believe should not continue driving or who can not continue the rehabilitation program often for medical or legal reasons. In this particular instance, certain contestants are eliminated from the competition and their licenses are returned and they are given a ride home by their nominators. However, a prematurely expelled contestant or contestant who refuses to continue may still be considered for the title, as was the case in Canada's Worst Driver Ever, in which Dale Pitton was expelled in the second-to-last episode, only to be brought back for the trophy presentation. In extreme cases, the experts may contact the relevant Ministry of Transport and request that a driver's license be put up for review, if they believe that a contestant is medically unfit to continue driving. To date, this has happened only twice, in Canada's Worst Driver 4 with Donna Hicks and Canada's Worst Driver Ever with Dale. The elimination process continues until only three contestants remain (the original intent was for two contestants to remain, but due to the first season containing an episode in which no one graduated, there were three; every subsequent season has had three finalists). Those three finalists are then given the final challenge, which is typically a three-in-a-car forward-backward slalom within a certain time limit, followed by the Mega Challenge, an obstacle course with elements of almost every previous challenge (the standard transmission balancing challenge, among others, is not part of the Mega Challenge, but every challenge that is practical to include does get included), as well as a driving examination through the busy streets of a major urban centre in Canada near the Driver Rehabilitation Centre (since season seven, the road test has been in Hamilton, Ontario). Based on these three challenges, the experts determine which among the three is Canada's Worst Driver. With the exception of the eighth season, in which both Kevin Simmons and Flora Wang were named Canada's Worst Driver, the contestant who fared the second-worst is deemed to not have graduated from the Driver Rehabilitation Centre, while the contestant who fared the third-worst is considered a graduate (with the exception of the eleventh season, in which, despite faring the third-worst, Sholom Hoffman failed to graduate). Unlike other versions of the Worst Driver series around the world, where being eliminated early is rewarded with a new car while the Worst Driver has their car destroyed, Canada's Worst Driver awards no prizes aside from a trophy for being named the worst, as the point of the show is to educate rather than entertain.
Canada's Worst Driver