Driving skills exam: vehicle rules, scoring, and retakes

Explanation

On exam day, only the BMV examiner(s) or other authorized BMV personnel may ride along — no parents, instructors or friends. The vehicle itself must be legally equipped, insured, registered, and in safe, clean condition; any interior camera has to be deactivated for the exam (a backup camera is fine). The examiner has discretion to reject a vehicle outright for problems like unsafe tires, a missing bumper, broken glass or mirrors, or an inoperative door.

The exam evaluates things like lane discipline and signaling, following distance, reacting to being passed, speed control, defensive habits, listening to instructions, intersection approach and stopping, and reversing out of a parking space correctly. Some mistakes — not using the defroster or wipers, not keeping both hands on the wheel, wrong-gear selection, failing to signal, driving too slowly, missing a blind-spot check — can cost points or cause a fail without being automatic. Other actions are automatic failures regardless of anything else: disobeying a yield, stop, school-zone or no-turn-on-red sign or a traffic signal; backing over a curb; hitting a parked vehicle; failing to use a seat belt; speeding or driving too fast for conditions; illegal passing or crossing a solid yellow line; failing to yield the right of way; and causing an accident during the exam, among others. Even after a failure, the examiner decides whether to keep going or end the exam there.

Fail once, and you wait 7 days before retaking it. Fail a third time while still holding a learner’s permit, and the wait extends to 2 months from that last failed attempt.

Example

A driver signals late while changing lanes (a score-affecting mistake, not automatic) but then runs a stop sign later in the same exam — a stop-sign violation is an automatic failure, so the exam ends in a fail no matter how well the rest of the drive went.

Common mistake

Assuming every mistake during the exam is treated the same way. The manual splits mistakes into two tiers: some only affect your score or can cause a fail depending on severity, while a shorter list of serious violations — like disobeying a stop sign or causing an accident — fails the exam automatically, no matter what else happens.

What the manual says

No one other than the BMV examiner(s) conducting the skills exam or other authorized BMV personnel is allowed in your vehicle when you take the driving skills exam. Your vehicle must be legally equipped, insured, and in a safe and clean condition.

Any of the following actions shall result in the automatic failure of the driving skills exam: Disobeying a yield, stop, school zone, or no turn on red sign

If you fail a driving skills exam, you must wait seven days before you can retake the exam. Upon failure of a third driving skills exam while holding a learner’s permit, you must wait for two months from the date of the last failed driving skills exam before taking the exam again.