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Articles
HONK IF YOU ACED THE NEW DMV WRITTEN EXAMINATION ___________________________ By Roy Rivenburg, Times Staff Writer So many people have been flunking California's written driving test that the DMV recently overhauled it. Unfortunately, the new exam is disqualifying even more people: The failure rate among first-time applicants jumped from 64% to 77%, even though the number of multiple-choice answers was cut from four to three per question and the reading level was dumbed down from eighth-grade to fifth-grade. One possible explanation is that California drivers are, to use the clinical term, "getting stupider" which is easy to believe if you've been on the freeway lately. Another theory involves the DMV's revamped anti-cheating scheme. The new exam comes in 10 versions (instead of the previous five), used a pool of 340 possible questions (instead of 120) and gets changed every three months. Nevertheless, because of the higher failure rate, "we're definitely going to take another look at the test," says DMV spokesman Bill Branch. |
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