New York City’s reputation for having chaotic traffic and reckless drivers may be supported by new data from the Department of Motor Vehicles, which shows that nearly half of aspiring drivers failed their road tests this year.
The records, which were obtained by Gothamist, found that the flunk rate of the driving test has continuously risen since the Covid-19 pandemic. As in 2021, the failure rate in the city was 41%, according to the data. For 2024, the flunk rate was recorded to be 48%, which is higher than the statewide average of 43%, the DMV reported.
Unsatisfactory performances during road tests are often the result of points being added up from mistakes made by the driver. While small errors like failing to signal come with a 5-point docking, more considerable issues like messing up a three-point turn or a parallel park costs drivers 15 points. If a driver reaches 30 or more points during the evaluation, they fail the exam.
Johnathan Romano, a co-owner of SoHo Driving School in Manhattan, told Gothamist one of his students failed a road test earlier this year after racking up 65 points, along with an automatic failure for “insufficient skill or practice,” a general term DMV examiners use when a test taker seems to lack a basic understanding of how to drive.
According to the data, the failure rates are comparatively high at testing sites in Brooklyn and Queens, where the percentage of flunks this year has hit 56% and 57%, respectively. Next in line was the Bronx, where 42% of road test takers failed. However, the DMV does not offer a road test in Manhattan, which may indicate the data is not fully representative of the borough’s populations.
The only borough where the success rate for driving tests was found to have increased was Staten Island, the DMV reported. Yet, this may be due to the area’s relatively low population density.
“Staten Island does have usually a higher passing rate,” Jose Corpas, a retired driving instructor, told Gothamist. “I attribute that to less traffic in some of the road test areas in Staten Island.”
The broader growth in the flunk rate comes during a period when incidents of reckless driving and traffic deaths have also risen in NYC. Between 2019 and 2022, statewide traffic deaths climbed 25% across New York state. More recently, in the first six months of 2024, 127 people were killed by drivers, compared to 82 people being fatally shot in the same period, according to city data.
