First off, Spain's process isn't designed to produce safe drivers. Some people believe it's designed to raise revenues for the government. Others are convinced it's just a moneymaker for driving schools. Some think it's both. All I know is that it just doesn't produce decent drivers.

Second, it isn't cheap. You have to enroll in a commercial driving school, no matter how long you've been driving. If you already know how to drive, the whole process (including DMV fees) can cost between $400 and $500. If you haven't driven before, then the cost more than doubles.

Preparing for the written test is a chore all by itself. The easy part is memorizing the meaning of the 200+ roadsigns. The hard part is memorizing all the general traffic regulations and the exceptions to them. It seems like the Spanish DMV began with a inadequate set of sensible regulations and then added one exception after another until they got what they have now. And that's what they test on. There are 40 questions and you can only get four incorrect. A lot of people flunk the written test at least once, even after weeks of spending evenings in the classroom.

Oct 06
IT'S GETTING EASIER
The clipping on the right refers to a story inside the 9/29 issue of our newspaper. The headline says that the passing rate for the driver's license written test increased from 50% to 70% after the "trick questions" were eliminated.

In addition, the story inside said that the number of questions dropped from 40 to 30 and the number of incorrect answers allowed dropped from 4 to 3.

Preparing for the driving test isn't easy, either, even for the most experienced driver. The tests we took were conducted in an area in the outskirts of Ferrol that most of us from the sticks are unfamiliar with. You have to spend hours driving the routes that the driving schools know will be used during the exam. These routes include lots of traffic, unique traffic circles, roads with traffic lights hidden by trees, and difficult intersections with painted traffic markings (stops, yields, etc.) that have been worn away over time until they are barely visible. Miss one of them and you flunk, then and there. That's the reason for going along the routes repeatedly before the exam.

For experienced drivers, the hardest part is learning to drive in the manner expected by the DMV examiners. But nobody will continue driving that way after he or she finally gets a license. For example, you have to approach a stop sign by driving very slowly for almost a half a block in second gear (5-speed stick shifts, you know). When you do finally pull to a stop you must do it abruptly enough that the examiner feels it. It should at least make his head move a little so he knows it wasn't a "rolling stop". It is forbidden to adjust a rearview mirror while the car is in motion. You must have your hands "just so" on the steering wheel. Etcetera, etcetera.

In American high schools, "teaching the test" may produce higher SAT scores but it doesn't really prepare the students for college. In Spain, preparing for the driving test doesn't even begin to prepare the students for real-world traffic.