Driving Exam Recording and Complaint Procedure

• 14 days — the time you have to file a complaint about how the exam was conducted or the conditions it was held in, counted from the day of the exam.
• 21 days — how long the recording of a category B practical exam is normally kept.
• If you file a complaint within that time, the recording is kept until the explanatory proceedings are concluded, not just for 21 days.

If you want to challenge the result, meeting the complaint deadline is what matters most — without it, accessing and using the recording is much harder.

An exam result isn't an administrative decision that you can appeal in the usual way. Instead, the Driver Licensing Act provides for a separate mechanism: a complaint about how the exam was conducted, or the conditions it was held in (Article 68 of the Driver Licensing Act).

It's this complaint, not an appeal, that sets the procedure below in motion — this article and the FAQ use the word "appeal" loosely, since that's how people usually search for this topic, but the formal mechanism is a complaint.

The right to view the recording of a practical exam belongs to the person who took the exam (or their representative) and who has filed a complaint about how the exam was conducted or the conditions it was held in.

It isn't a separate right available on a plain request regardless of a complaint — viewing the recording is tied to starting the complaint procedure described below.

The practical exam for a category B licence is, as a rule, recorded using an image and sound recording device. The recording is kept at the exam centre for 21 days from the day of the exam.

If the person who took the exam files a complaint about how it was conducted, or the conditions it was held in, within that time, the recording is kept for longer — until the explanatory proceedings are concluded.

A complaint, with reasons, is filed within 14 days of the day the exam took place, to the provincial marshal (marszałek województwa), through the director of the exam centre (WORD/DORD) where the exam was held.

The centre's director forwards the complaint to the marshal along with explanations and the necessary documentation. Filing a complaint this way is also what gives you grounds to view the exam recording.

The provincial marshal reviews the complaint and, by administrative decision, invalidates the state exam (Article 72 of the Driver Licensing Act) if it was conducted in breach of the regulations and the irregularities found affected the result.

An invalidated exam is either retaken at the expense of the provincial road traffic centre (WORD), or — at the request of the person who took the exam — the exam fee is refunded instead.

An appeal against the provincial marshal's decision on an exam complaint can be filed with the Self-Government Appeals Board (SKO), within 14 days of receiving the decision, through the provincial marshal.

Only from the SKO's ruling can you — under the general rules of administrative court proceedings — file a complaint with the provincial administrative court (WSA).

Viewing the recording as part of a complaint isn't the same as getting a copy of it.

If the recording is part of the case file in administrative proceedings about invalidating the exam, a party can rely on the file-access rights under Article 73 of the Code of Administrative Procedure: viewing the file and making copies of it, also after the proceedings have concluded, or asking the authority to make an ordinary copy within its technical and organisational means (§ 1; Supreme Administrative Court resolution of 8 October 2018, case no. I OPS 1/18); certifying a copy or issuing a certified transcript requires the party's important interest (§ 2).

Case law confirms this in practice: in the case decided by the Provincial Administrative Court in Bydgoszcz on 24 October 2023 (case no. II SA/Bd 415/23), the court set aside a decision refusing to issue a copy of the DVD recording of a category B exam, which the candidate had requested during an appeal to SKO, among other things to commission their own expert review.

This isn't, however, a simple, standalone "request a copy from WORD" procedure — a copy can be requested by a party to proceedings whose case file contains the recording.

Filing a complaint, and the resulting right to view the recording, mainly makes sense when there's a specific, concrete doubt about how the exam was conducted — for example, a disputed mistake called by the examiner, or a question about exactly what happened on the road.

Meeting the 14-day deadline is essential — after it passes, a complaint can no longer be filed.