Leaving the Department of Motor Vehicles office in Canoga Park Tuesday, 20-year-old Alex Martinez was ecstatic, having just passed the written portion of the state's driving test.
On his seventh attempt. "I'm not good with tests," says Martinez, a dog groomer from Winnetka who arrived at the DMV on his bicycle. "When I take tests, it all seems like gobbledygook. That's why I have to ride my bike until I get my license."
Is it any wonder, then, that California motorists ranked as the fourth worst in the country in a recent national drivers test, behind only those in New York, New Jersey and Hawaii? Martinez personifies what that test conducted by GMAC Insurance found: That 20.1 percent of licensed Americans - roughly 41 million drivers on the road - would not pass a written drivers exam if taken today.
"It's hard to get most drivers to take the written test seriously," says Saeid Rafiei, owner of the Union Driving School of Reseda. "They take it for granted. They think that if they can drive a car, they know enough." But an alarming number of licensed Americans lack knowledge of basic rules of the road, according to the survey of more than 5,000 drivers.
The survey also found that drivers have difficulty on questions about yellow lights and safe following distances. More than eight out of 10 drivers could not identify the correct action to take when approaching a steady yellow traffic light, and almost three-fourths could not properly identify a typical safe following distance from the car in front of them. Officials for GMAC, which has been conducting the national survey for five years, said it is ironic that drivers in the states with the biggest number of motorists drive so badly.
"Their drivers, for whatever reason, are less familiar with the rules of the road," Wade Bontrager, a senior vice president for GMAC Insurance, said in a statement. "People need to understand that they need to be educated. They need to remember the rules of the road and that educated drivers are safer drivers."
According to GMAC, the record among California drivers taking the test has worsened considerably in the past year. In 2008, California ranked No. 33 in the insurance company's listing of best drivers. This year's list puts the Golden State at No. 48 (out of 51, including the District of Columbia). The rankings of best and worst drivers are made on the basis of test results on a 20-question exam similar to written DMV tests in most states. A copy of the test can be found nationaldriverstest.com.
Idaho, Wisconsin, Montana, Kansas and South Dakota were found to have the best drivers. Overall, men were more likely to pass the test than women, but the gap narrowed considerably in the past two years of testing. In 2008, 87 percent of men passed compared to 80 percent of women. In 2009, the difference was 81 percent for men versus 80 percent of women.
Men over 45 years of age posted the highest scores on the test, and drivers over 35 were more likely to pass than those under 35. The worst scores were posted by drivers 18 to 24 years of age. Maria Velarde, 43, a Reseda housewife who was renewing her license at the DMV Tuesday, agreed with the survey findings except she believes women drivers are considerably better drivers than men.
"All the bad drivers I see are men," she said.
Santa Clarita aerospace engineer Josh Berrean, 30, a transplant to California from Oregon - which ranked among the 10 states with the best drivers - said he had found local motorists worse than those in his home state. "There's so many more drivers in California than in other states," he said, "and then there's all the traffic that makes driving that much more difficult."
