I just took a call at our office from a woman who wanted to take the PA driving test, and she wanted us just to teach her how to parallel park.  She didn’t want any other education, and claimed she already knew how to drive and drives around all the time.

As the conversation went on, I found out she doesn’t have a PA learner’s permit – she has a learner’s permit from Tennessee, which means she’s been driving illegally 700 miles north of where she’s permitted to drive.  But she expected to take the PA test with her TN permit.

A learner’s permit is permission to learn how to drive – it’s not a driver’s license.  Among the restrictions on a permit is that you must be accompanied by a licensed driver at all times, and you may not drive outside the boundaries of the state that issued the learner’s permit.

I have to ask myself – if this person didn’t know she couldn’t take a PA driver’s test with a Tennessee learner’s permit, what else doesn’t she know?  I told her we couldn’t do anything for her until she’d applied for and received a PA learner’s permit, and at that point we would do a standard 6-hour training package to make sure she knows how to drive defensively in all road environments.

She hung up at this point, because I wasn’t giving her the easy answers she wanted.  But we’re not in this business to license everyone – it’s our job, our passion, to make sure that everyone who drives in Pennsylvania is as safe as they can possibly be behind the wheel, so they’re not pointing a two-ton weapon of mass destruction at our families.

It pains me to know she’ll call around and eventually find a low-rent driving school that will give her exactly what she wants, not what she needs.