How I Took the Driving Tests

This Fri­day, my whole fam­i­ly cel­e­brat­ed my suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of the road test and the receipt of my driver’s license. To be pre­cise, they only issued me a paper con­firm­ing my suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of the test, and the actu­al license will arrive by mail with­in ten days. Here, all doc­u­ments are sent by mail, so there’s no need to go any­where to pick them up.

The test­ing and receipt of the license takes place in two stages. First, you take the the­o­ry test, and then the prac­ti­cal dri­ving test. There­fore, long before tak­ing the the­o­ry test, Levy got me a man­u­al from the MVD (Motor Vehi­cle Divi­sion) of Ari­zona, sim­i­lar to our GIBDD. Each state has its own ser­vice, and the traf­fic rules may vary slightly.

The book­let was small but in Eng­lish. For me, study­ing it was com­pli­cat­ed by my lack of knowl­edge of the Eng­lish lan­guage, so it is almost entire­ly marked with the Russ­ian trans­la­tions of unfa­mil­iar words. I took sev­er­al prac­tice tests on the MVD web­site. I also browsed the inter­net for prac­tice tests. Even­tu­al­ly, by June of last year, I felt ready to take the the­o­ry test.

The MVD was crowd­ed. We reg­is­tered, took a pho­to, which they didn’t give back to us. As soon as Levy and I com­plet­ed the nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion on the form (address, height, weight, eye col­or, and hair col­or), I was called to one of the numer­ous win­dows. The offi­cer entered my data into the com­put­er and took me to the machine set up on the table to check my vision. You look into the machine as if it were binoc­u­lars, and there, in com­plete dark­ness, glow­ing dots flash in dif­fer­ent cor­ners, and I have to say where this dot is — on the right, left, etc.

After the vision test, we paid what seemed to be $8. You could pay by card or cash. Then I was direct­ed to a room with about 10 ter­mi­nals, at one of which I had to take the test. It turned out that the test could be tak­en in the cho­sen lan­guage, but I decid­ed to take it in Eng­lish since I had stud­ied the rules in Eng­lish, and when I acti­vat­ed the trans­la­tion on the MVD web­site for the prac­tice tests, the trans­la­tion made the ques­tions some­times unclear. I had cho­sen the ter­mi­nal num­ber (from 1 to 10) in advance, and the oper­a­tor con­nect­ed it remote­ly. No one came into the room with me to explain any­thing.

My first thought was — what does this horse have to do with it? There was noth­ing about horse-drawn vehi­cles in the rules.

The ter­mi­nal dis­played a menu, with options like: sim­ple test and anoth­er word I didn’t under­stand. Well, of course, I thought, let me choose the sim­ple test. A horse appeared on the screen with three answer options. My first thought was — what does this horse have to do with it? There was noth­ing about horse-drawn vehi­cles in the rules. Then I real­ized that this was an exam­ple answer. After that, I fig­ured it out, chose the right menu, and things went bet­ter. I need­ed to answer 30 ques­tions. Around the 24^th to 26^th ques­tion, the test stopped. I thought I had pressed some­thing wrong, but it turns out that you only need to score 80% cor­rect answers for the test to stop.

When the word appeared—CONGRATULATION (I knew this word), I real­ized that I had suc­cess­ful­ly passed the test on the first try. I was issued a paper stat­ing that I received a Per­mit, allow­ing me to dri­ve with an instruc­tor, and the actu­al per­mit card should arrive by mail with­in 10 days. Our entire time at the MVD took about an hour. After that, I could learn to dri­ve and trav­el around the city with an instruc­tor or any adult who has a license.

That was the end of June 2018, dur­ing my last vis­it, and the Per­mit is issued for a year, dur­ing which you can make sev­er­al attempts to take the dri­ving test with an MVD inspec­tor in the city. Valya arranged for me to have 15 hours of dri­ving with a Russ­ian-speak­ing instruc­tor, but it didn’t help me much. I was com­plete­ly inex­pe­ri­enced at dri­ving a car; I didn’t even know how to start it. And here, the streets have such speeds, 40 – 45 miles per hour (65−72 km per hour) in any lane, and on high­ways, 65 – 75 miles per hour. Plus, you can get fined for both speed­ing and dri­ving too slow­ly, as well as for hold­ing up traf­fic. The fif­teen paid hours flew by quick­ly; I wasn’t ready to take the test. Then, on week­ends, Levy start­ed teach­ing me. It was time to leave for home, but I still tried to take the dri­ving test.

We signed up online for a spe­cif­ic time. We arrived at the MVD at the appoint­ed hour, paid $12 again, but this time for the dri­ving test. This pay­ment cov­ers two pos­si­ble attempts at tak­ing the test.

The dri­ving test began with a three-point turn, and then dri­ving out onto the streets. Due to my lack of knowl­edge of the lan­guage, I approached from the wrong side a bit but exe­cut­ed the three-point turn with­out hit­ting any posts. The instruc­tor asked me to repeat the maneu­ver, but this time to approach from the cor­rect side. At that moment, I got real­ly ner­vous, pan­icked, and hit the post. There­fore, the test is not accept­ed. My first attempt end­ed in fail­ure. Then, at the begin­ning of Octo­ber, Mark and I went to vis­it Boston, and when we returned and want­ed to sign up for the test again, it turned out that every­thing was booked until my depar­ture. And then I had a flight to Russia.

Dur­ing this vis­it, Levy and I couldn’t start dri­ving prac­tice at all. On Sat­ur­day and Sun­day, there were always some urgent mat­ters. I start­ed to wor­ry that my per­mit was about to expire and I would have to retake the the­o­ry test. Final­ly, in April, we resumed our lessons. On week­ends, we drove to the MVD, prac­ticed the three-point turn, and drove around the MVD on pos­si­ble routes. This time, before tak­ing the test, Levy gave me a thick instruc­tion book for Maz­da in Eng­lish. He told me to study it, because the last time, dur­ing the test, I didn’t know where the win­dow opens on the driver’s side 🙂 I stud­ied it just until I got to the main­te­nance sec­tion. I can read, but I don’t under­stand spo­ken language.

And on May 3, we signed up to take the test. There are no May hol­i­days here, and the 1^st to 3^rd were reg­u­lar work­ing days. I took the test in Levy’s Maz­da, the one he taught me in. Every­one takes the test in their own cars. The only con­di­tion is that if the car has a rearview cam­era, then dur­ing the three-point turn the cam­era is turned off. The actu­al test lasts about 30 min­utes. This time, I imme­di­ate­ly told the inspect­ing offi­cer that my Eng­lish was very poor, and she didn’t trou­ble me with long expla­na­tions. But inter­est­ing­ly, while dri­ving around the city, she took me on a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent route than the one we drove with Levy.

And that’s how I passed the dri­ving test.

By the way, less than 10 days lat­er, my driver’s license arrived by mail. I tried to smile in the pho­to; Amer­i­cans smile wide­ly in all their pho­tos. I man­aged to achieve only a bare­ly notice­able smile. Here, it’s not­ed that Rus­sians smile lit­tle in pho­tos, espe­cial­ly on documents.