Hooray, I passed the written exam at the local DMV, tomorrow is the road test. The written exam consists of two parts – signs and everything else. You can choose to take the exam in Russian. You can’t make a single mistake on the signs. For the rest, you need to score at least 80% correct. Yesterday, I made a mistake on the signs, somehow assuming I knew them.
Here’s the sign where there were four answer options, two silly ones and two like this (I’ll write ~): 1) if you are driving in the right lane – reduce speed, 2) if you are driving in the right lane – switch to the left lane.
The retake costs 2 bucks, and you can retake it the next day. After three unsuccessful attempts, they send you to driving school to study the theoretical material.
Some questions from the second part are smart, some not so much. For instance, a sign of a cyclist in a yellow diamond and the question – what is this, with one of the four options being a sign involving a cyclist. But there are some tricky ones. Like how many seconds should you count at speeds of 45-70 mph to estimate the braking distance. Or how many feet should you drive with low beams at night, instead of high beams (subsequently with some numbers, close to each other).
In preparation, this really helps: http://driving-tests.org/ It works with a different interface on mobiles, really convenient.
At the DMV, there’s always a queue to the load balancers, reaching up to 40 people. If you arrive in the morning – you get your electronic queue ticket first. I arrived 20 minutes before opening and was first in line. They ask for proof of residence, SSN, two documents, and consider Russian driver’s licenses (without them, the procedure is different). The electronic queue directs you to one of the tables, each equipped with a vision test device, and a tablet for signing. At the DMV, they not only issue licenses but you can also buy a cool license plate number for yourself, for example. It seems they also offer extras like registering births and voter registration.
By the way, dealing with the proof of residency is tricky. Despite having lived in a hotel all January, and the hotel providing a certificate, for the DMV it’s not really a valid document. But utility bills or a lease agreement with the landlord are quite acceptable documents.
So, without looking it up on Google, does anyone have an answer to the puzzle from the second paragraph?
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 