Who built this, and how the questions get written

PassRates US is written and built by Vikas, a developer and driving enthusiast who builds and publishes driving guides. It is not a driving school, it is not a state agency, and nobody here is a licensing examiner. What it is: a set of free permit practice tests where each explanation carries the statute, handbook section or CFR part it was drafted against. That makes every claim on the site checkable by anyone who cares to.

From statute to question

A question starts at a rule, never at another practice site. Someone opens the state statute or the current official driver handbook, drafts a question that turns on that rule, and notes the numbered section it was drafted against. That number travels with the question and shows up beside the explanation. The rule belongs to the state; the sentence does not. It is also why a citation here points at a section number rather than at a page of prose.

Car tests combine one layer of rules that are identical in every state, federal sign shapes and right of way among them, with a second layer written off that state’s own law: permit ages, alcohol limits, helmet rules, insurance minimums. Commercial licensing is federal under 49 CFR Part 383, which fixes the pass mark at 80 percent and has states test from one model manual, so a single CDL bank is correct in every state.

What happens when a state publishes nothing

This is the part worth reading. Some agencies never put the figures other sites quote most loudly into writing at all. California DMV publishes no question count for the car knowledge test on any current page, and no motorcycle count at all. Texas DPS publishes a 70 percent pass mark and no count. Lifting a number from a competitor would mean inheriting their errors while claiming to be the checked option, so a figure that exists in an official source is quoted with that source attached, and a figure that exists nowhere official is recorded here as a gap.

Time limits work the same way. A few states publish one, most do not. Where the allowance on a test here is ours, the page admits it instead of dressing our own number up as an official one.

What this site is not

• Not official in any way. No state licensing agency, no DMV, the FMCSA and no other federal body runs this site, checks it or endorses it.
• Not the official examination. Passing every test here does not guarantee passing the real one.
• Not legal advice. Where a rule matters to you, the section number on the answer is the shortest route to the actual text.
• Not a paywall. It is free to use, there is no signup and no email, and advertising pays for it.

How a figure gets checked

Every number on a state page, a pass mark, a permit age, a count of supervised hours, is opened on the agency’s own page or in the statute before it goes up, and the date it was confirmed is printed next to it. The sources list at the foot of each page is the set of pages that were actually read, not a list of places that might say something similar. When an agency page and a statute disagree, the page says so and quotes both rather than picking the one that reads more neatly.

Figures age. A check date that is months old is not a claim that the rule has changed, but it is a reason to click through before a trip to the counter, and every page makes that one click away.

Photos, signs and drawings

The photographs are real: signs on real roads, agency offices, school buses, freeways. Each one comes from Wikimedia Commons under a free license, is stored on this site rather than loaded from elsewhere, and carries the photographer’s name and license under it. A caption says only what the photo shows and where it was taken. The sign artwork is the federal design from the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, which the manual dedicates to the public domain. The intersection diagrams, timelines and charts are drawn for these pages from the figures beside them.

Advertising and sponsorship

Ads keep the site free and sustainable. It may also carry sponsored placements or collaborations with driving schools and other driving services, and anything of that kind is labeled as sponsored or as a partner where it appears. None of it buys a figure, a page’s conclusion, or which answer a question marks as correct. The site does not ask you for personal details to use the tests, and it does not sell data.

Corrections

Rules change and pages get restructured. A citation that has drifted out of step with the agency page it points at is a bug, and the contact page is the fastest way to report one. Fixes land with a fresh check date on the figure.

States covered so far

Florida, Texas, California, New York, with more being added. Every state gets the same treatment: its own statutes read, its own figures cited, and a plain statement wherever the agency publishes nothing.

Browse all DMV practice tests.

Written by Vikas, developer and driving enthusiast