London Cab Drivers Must Pass 'The Knowledge' And It's Probably The Hardest Test In The World

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If you want to be a London taxi driver you’re required to take a frankly ridiculous test called ‘The Knowledge.’ The basic premise is to learn every street and every point of interest within London, which is as daunting a task as you’d expect.

The New York Times followed a prospective taxi driver as he revised for the test, which can take years and requires spending many days on a scooter learning your way around town - but there’s way more to it than simply learning a bunch of street names:

To achieve the required standard to be licensed as an “All London” taxi driver you will need a thorough knowledge, primarily, of the area within a six-mile radius of Charing Cross. You will need to know: all the streets; housing estates; parks and open spaces; government offices and departments; financial and commercial centres; diplomatic premises; town halls; registry offices; hospitals; places of worship; sports stadiums and leisure centres; airline offices; stations; hotels; clubs; theatres; cinemas; museums; art galleries; schools; colleges and universities; police stations and headquarters buildings; civil, criminal and coroner’s courts; prisons; and places of interest to tourists. In fact, anywhere a taxi passenger might ask to be taken.
If anything, this description understates the case. The six-mile radius from Charing Cross, the putative center-point of London marked by an equestrian statue of King Charles I, takes in some 25,000 streets. London cabbies need to know all of those streets, and how to drive them — the direction they run, which are one-way, which are dead ends, where to enter and exit traffic circles, and so on. But cabbies also need to know everything on the streets. Examiners may ask a would-be cabby to identify the location of any restaurant in London. Any pub, any shop, any landmark, no matter how small or obscure — all are fair game. Test-takers have been asked to name the whereabouts of flower stands, of laundromats, of commemorative plaques. One taxi driver told me that he was asked the location of a statue, just a foot tall, depicting two mice sharing a piece of cheese. It’s on the facade of a building in Philpot Lane, on the corner of Eastcheap, not far from London Bridge.

The video at the top of the page covers one driver recounting the route between two points, without the aid of a map or any kind of help. It’s purely by memory. He stumbles a couple of times, but remarkably gets there in the end through side streets and navigating one-way systems. Remarkable.