Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
New York State Licensed Driving Schools
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2018 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
I have a driver's license but rarely drive, and the longer I go without practice, the more I think I ought to get some lessons in before getting back on the road. I'd like to feel more comfortable driving so I can share the work on long car trips, rent a car for hiking or activist work, and so on. So I decided to get some lessons from a driving school. I saw one in my area advertises itself as registered with New York State Department of Motor Vehicles as a driving school, and thought I may as well do my due diligence and check the accuracy of that claim.
Well, New York State DMV does regulate and certify driving schools and driving instructors; a driving school needs a license to sell instruction. Hella requirements and forms.
But there's no public list of driving school licensees. The NYS DMV provides a DMV-Regulated Facilities search on its site, for car repair shops, auto dealers, etc., but that does not include licensed driving schools. And the site lists providers of the in-classroom Point and Insurance Reduction Program (PIRP), in case you seek that. But I want behind-the-wheel lessons, not PIRP.
Short-term solution which I eventually found, and am sharing for future readers: you can call the NYS DMV's Bureau of Driver Training Programs (DTP) at (518) 473-7174, and ask them about a specific driving school (name and address), and they can verify whether it's licensed, and how long it's been licensed.
Long-term solution: I filed a Freedom of Information Law request for the list of licensed driving schools and I nominated that list in a dataset for New York's Open Data portal.
(More a daydream than any kind of solution: signing up to take a New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission-authorized behind-the-wheel course meant for New York City taxi drivers!!! Why half-ass my "get more confident as a driver" journey?!)
Update as of 7 Feb 2019: The DMV completed my FOIL request and provided a 36-page list of licensed driving schools!
