You Can Fail Before You Leave the Curb

The behind-the-wheel test does not begin with driving. It begins with the examiner walking around the car, and a surprising number of appointments end there — not because the driver was not ready, but because the vehicle was not.

The paperwork the car needs

• Current registration for the vehicle you bring.
• Evidence of insurance for that vehicle. Vehicle Code section 16028 already requires a driver to be able to produce evidence of financial responsibility on demand; on test day the examiner is the person asking.
• Your permit, and a supervising driver who meets the DMV's requirements to have accompanied you there.

Bring the actual documents rather than a memory of where they usually are. Ten minutes of glovebox archaeology in front of an examiner is a bad start to an hour you have been waiting weeks for.

The safety check

The examiner checks that the vehicle is safe to operate before agreeing to sit in it. The DMV publishes the current list and you should read it there, because it is the authority and it changes. The items that trip people up most often, in our experience of the phone calls afterwards, are the dull ones:

• Brake lights, indicators and hazard lights all working — check them with someone standing behind the car, not by hoping.
• A driver's window that opens and closes.
• Working seatbelts front and rear, including buckles that latch properly.
• A windshield without cracking in the area the wipers sweep.
• Mirrors present and secure.
• Doors that open from inside and outside.
• A working horn and a working parking brake.
• Tires with legal tread, and no warning light glowing on the dash.

Do the walk-around the day before, not in the queue.

Whose insurance is covering the test?

The policy on the car you bring. If it is a parent's car, it is their policy responding; if it is a driving school's car, it is theirs. If you are borrowing a car from someone outside the household, ask the owner directly whether their policy covers a permit holder driving with an examiner aboard — that is a carrier question, and answers vary.

An examiner does not bring their own coverage to your car. That is worth knowing before you borrow a vehicle you have never driven.

Practice in the car you will be tested in

This is the single biggest avoidable disadvantage. Turning up in an unfamiliar vehicle means you are learning where the wiper stalk is while being scored on observation. If the test car has to be borrowed, drive it for a few hours first, in a parking lot, doing the specific things you will be asked to do — reversing, three-point turns, parking.

The day the license arrives

Passing changes your household's insurance position immediately, and nothing prompts anyone about it. A newly licensed driver at the address is information your carrier expects, and the sooner it is given the less chance of a mess at renewal.

If a test date is booked, that is the right week to price the policy rather than the week after. Tell us where you are in the process and we will have the numbers ready for the day you pass.