Cleaning out my inbox the other day, I spotted a news release slugged, “Nearly 1 in 5 American Drivers Unfit for the Road,” and it was just too tempting not to follow up.  It turns out GMAC Insurance has been conducting a National Drivers Test for seven years now, and 18% of American drivers failed in 2011.  Pretty bad, right?  Well, 19% of we Pennsylvanians failed the test too.  The Keystone State actually ranked 26^th according to the GMAC data – a marked improvement from 2010 when PA came in 39^th among states. 

Looking even more closely at the data, Pennsylvanians’ average score was 77.7% , just a hair below the national average.  I had envisioned myself writing this post while boasting a perfect score (but I think 95% is a perfectly acceptable score too).  PLEASE, someone tell me you too would be tripped up by this one:

“When you approach a traffic signal displaying a steady yellow light, you must:”

A: Go through the intersection before it turns red

B: Stop if it is safe to do so

C: Be prepared to stop

D: Slow down and proceed with caution

Seriously… B, C, and D are virtually the same thing?!?  Despite my complaints, the correct answer remained “B.”  GMAC’s chief marketing officer Scott Eckman tells me the question people miss the most is: “How far you should follow somebody.”  If you’re taking the test later on, just remember the three-second rule (and not the one that applies when you drop a pretzel in the newsroom). 

If you want to brush up on your driving knowledge, the PA driver’s manual is posted online.  While I was surfing around looking for it, I came across PennDOT’s own safe driver quiz.  I won’t go into details about my score on this one, but I did learn that the fine for failure to yield to a pedestrian is $50-bucks.  Also, ‘failure to restrain children up to age four in an appropriate child safety seat’ is apparently a primary violation of the state’s seat belt law (I gave myself a pass on that one since I don’t have kids).    

Good luck on those quizzes… and on the highways.