“So when did you get your licen—”
The question was cut short as my shoulder slammed, hard, into the passenger door.
We had turned—without signaling, I noticed—and had nearly hit a school bus as we came careening through. Only by some automotive providence were we both still alive.
This really would be such a stupid way to die. It wasn’t the last time I had the thought as we lurched, jerked, and swerved our way toward the school.
“So when did you get your license?”
“Oh, just a few weeks ago.
“Did you get it from the DMV or— ”
“I got it private.”
For those unfamiliar, throughout the MontCo area and more broadly, there exist driving schools designated by PennDOT as certified third-party driver’s license testing centers. In other words, in addition to just driving lessons, they provide an alternative to getting your license from the DMV itself. My Turn To Drive, Driven2Drive, John’s Driving School—the names start to blur.
Interestingly enough, the official DMV-offered driver’s test is entirely free. Driven2Drive, though, offers their test at a price of $75—and that’s on the low end. For many of the others listed, costs go well up into the hundreds. So what could possibly motivate someone to spend their money when they really don’t have to? Simple. They’re buying a different test.
I believe that third-party testing is not in any way equivalent to the official Pennsylvania driver’s test—because if it were, an entire business model would be rendered defunct. Consciously or unconsciously, people know that when they’re forking over money for an otherwise free service, they expect something in return. In our case, it’s the implicit understanding that your child will have a less difficult, more expedited process toward achieving licensedom.
The first, most obvious difference between the official and third-party test is the car. In the DMV, no vehicle is provided. Rather, you’re expected to bring your own. In the third-party version, your test is conducted in one of the company’s official, branded automobiles, typically emblazoned with a logo and paint job such as to make it obvious to all other drivers on the road who exactly is behind the wheel. It’s not subtle, either. It’s a bright, flashing warning, a visual “stay away” beaming out to every other car.
In other words, it creates a testing condition incongruent with the real thing. I know when I’m driving, and I see one of those vehicles—and they certainly aren’t an uncommon sight around here—I do anything I can to give one of their trademark testing cars as wide a berth as possible. I’m not alone, either. As Gabby Andrande ’26 says, “I see them, and I avoid them.”
This is only one of the many ways in which third-party testing diverges from the official version. At each step of the process, some tweak or adjustment is made to ease the process.
Sam Bergheiser ’25 echoed these thoughts. “I’d say the parallel parking test is not like a real parallel parking test. The car is so small and the cones are so wide that it’s completely unlike the actual thing. I mean, I still don’t really know how to parallel park.”
This complaisance bears deadly consequences. In a world where teen drivers are already predisposed toward auto accidents—vehicle fatalities are about three times higher, in fact—the last thing we need is to further grease the wheels of adolescent incompetence. And that’s not to mention every other driver who’s then endangered. At the end of the day, there is no student so deserving or so entitled to a license that they have the right to jeopardize the safety of everyone else on the road.
Yet it’s the unfortunate reality that this mentality pervades far beyond driving. The notion runs virulent, both here and in communities like ours—the idea that we are of means, and that for the right price we ought be able to jump the line, subvert the process, circumvent the obstacles present to those less fortunate. Think of the legions of college counselors, who, for prices of four or even five figures, offer the sort of help completely inaccessible to most students—a “help” that, in some cases, consists of practically writing kids’ essays. Think of the two, three, four week summer intensives dedicated to rigorous SAT prep. Gleaming doors of prestige and privilege for whom only a few are given keys.
We pulled into the school. It was a quick ride—we’d taken a shortcut.
