Last month, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp issued an executive order that dropped the formal driving test that had represented the final hurdle teens had to clear to acquire a license. The justification given for that was that it wasn't possible to maintain social distancing with a driving instructor in your car. Instead, all teens had to do in order to get a license was to complete the previous requirements (such as having 40+ hours of supervised driving time) and then they had to be cleared by their parents.
If you need or want more details about that, click here. But that pretty much covers it.
Anyway, that temporary rule was set to expire in mid-May which is *looks at calendar* now. That means that the process is being, well, let's just go with refined.
During a press conference on Tuesday, Kemp announced that teens who had gotten their licenses in the past few weeks by applying for them online (which reportedly exceeds 20,000 at this point) will have to come back and take the road test at some point between now and the end of September. Otherwise those licenses will be invalid.
"Anybody that has gotten a driver's license that hasn't taken the test - even though they met the criteria of so many hours on the road, and been to driving school, or had your parents verify that - they're still going to have to come back and take the driver's test," Kemp said.
The new executive order signed by Kemp says that the now required road test for that cluster of youngsters must be completed by no later than September 30.
Kemp further stated that this had always been the plan, and that he issued the order to clarify it after receiving a number of questions about the issue. He claimed the original intent was to address a backlog of road tests that had been postponed when stay-at-home orders were put into place in mid-March.
According toThe Atlanta Journal Constitution, Tuesday's order will allow the state's Department of Driver Services to conduct their tests "by remote means," in addition to just doing it the normal way. It also ordered the department to "correct public guidance documents" so they reflect that "testing was only temporarily suspended."
Make of that what you will.
The AJC notes that the executive order sent out in April said the traditional road test "is hereby suspended and applicants for a driver’s license shall not be required to complete a comprehensive on-the-road driving test," if all requirements were met. "Not" seems like a pretty big word in that sentence. There was also reportedly no mention of any test to come at a later date.
