Passing a Driver's Test in Penn Hills

With a pure cause of helping humankind (or, its lucky part that ended up in/nearby Pittsburgh), let me summarize my friends' and my experience of passing the PA driving exam at a Driver's License Center in Penn Hills.


Since I somehow managed to lose all the photos of the place (the police is currently investigating this case), I'm using the publicly available ones.

The entrance to the testing center.

The PennDOT center I'm wrting about is located on Rodi Rd at:

11620 Keleket Drive
Pittsburgh, PA 15235
(website) (map)

It's located on the territory of a mall with an extensive parking lot, which they use for testing purposes as well. Something tells me this is exactly why this parking is almost empty at PennDOT's business hours.

A turn into the mall area from Rodi Rd.
And thanks for crappy-quality images, googlemaps!

As far as I understood, you're supposed to show up with a car owner (who is doomed to a few minutes of stressful solitude, consumed by imagining what could happen to their beloved car). Dunno how it works if it's the test taker who owns a car. The items you need to present as you walk in and sign-up for the test at the leftmost stand:

• Car registration. 
• Car insurance.
• Owner's driver's license.
• Car keys. 
• Test-taker's learner's permit.

They do not require any document stating the permission from the owner to the test-taker to drive the vehicle. Nevertheless, you still need the car itself. It's a price barrier that deters many Americans from taking the test. I predict success for the politician who introduces vehicle-free driving tests into his set of (empty) promises.

Employees at this center are laid-back on time, so expect to be left to your devices for up to half-hour. On the positive side, you may be late for 20 minutes, and still take the test.

At the time of writing, there were just two male instructors who'd accompany your for the test. One younger, the other older, and both almost equally bald, they are both fine and don't seek to make your life difficult. This is not to say, however, that they take bribes in any form. But I am aware of a country where "not making life difficult" means exactly that.

As soon as one of those gentlemen find time for you, the test begins. The car owner -- as I wrote -- is not participating actively, except for his hair color shifting to gray.

Part I - Car Examination. This is not much a challenging stage, if the vehicle is not falling apart. An instructor will walk around the car and ask you to engage turn signals, headlights, high beams, brake lights, and four-way blinkers.

To me personally, it turned out to be a prohibitively hard vocabulary exam. I managed to pass it by engaging random mechanisms inside the car that would not make it move.

Our experience showed that checking integrity of side mirrors is not on the agenda.

Part II - Parallel Parking. Now it's time to show how you can parallel-park in a huge space between lined-up orange cones. I wouldn't say it's very representative of street parking, but otherwise nobody would ever get a DL.

Important: don't forget to turn the right blinker on when you start parking. If you miss this, the instructor annoys you by silently taking points off and writing notes. This leads to you cursing him, also triggering points reduction. It's not a vicious cycle you want to start.

The parallel parking exercise is located inside the mall parking lot.
You'll be starting from the left on the picture. 

A less depressing picture of the parking spot. Thought you might like it. 

If you feel adventurous, you may try parking there before your test, ignoring the sign prohibiting this. Or, if you're not adventurous by nature, you can freely practice it there before 8a.

Part III - Road Driving. So this is when the fun starts. You will go for a short ride, turning right from the parking territory. There's not much to say about the driving requirements. You just have to be extra-safe by bringing the car to a full stop (literally!) at stop signs.

Turns out that the instructors at this PennDOT make everyone drive exactly the same route. I saw this myself  on four attempts. So I've charted this route to let other people know. You start out by turning right onto Rodi Rd from the mall. Then the route turns into a hilly sidestreet half-mile down Rodi Rd. Then you turn back into Rodi Rd and return to the mall and driver to the Penndot location -- that's it!

The route includes two left turns through the oncoming traffic, two right turns into Rodi Rd, and a bunch of stop signs in the mall territory. No traffic lights, no crazy intersections, no confusing road signs, no multi-lane highways, and very few other cars. Anyway, take 10 minutes before the test to go through it.

Do not let your near-end excitement overshadow your caution - do not miss the stop sign depicted in the image below (it's the southmost one in the route). In fact, there is only a handful of times in life when you should let your excitement take over the caution. And driving tests are far from being one of those times.

I would not believe someone could overlook this sign...
... until I was presented some convincing evidence.

Part IV - Final Chores. This only happens if you showed epic driving in Part III.

They take a photo of yourself, manually compare it to the whole worldwide criminal database (what takes them so damn long otherwise?), and give you a temporary two-week license card. The permanent one will arrive in mail shortly. Ta-dam! Now you can officially DUI and tell stories about it.

--
Another empirically good idea is to go to Panera Bread after the test to celebrate your permanent victory or temporary defeat.

Update, May 2013: Now I have taken three people besides myself through this test on my car. I'm basically an expert in this small domain.

Update, July 2013: Some people don't have anyone to be an accompanying driver. For reasons unknown, DMV doesn't allow to rent a car and come alone. For even less known reasons, DMV allows to come in zipcars, alone.

Update, May 2015: I got a first-hand confirmation that this post is still accurate and the route is still the same. Yay!