The Knowledge Test

Virginia's knowledge examination and the vision screening that goes with it, and what an honest practice test can and cannot give you.

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Virginia's "permit test" is the written or automated knowledge examination described in Va. Code § 46.2-335 A, taken together with a vision examination before DMV may issue a learner's permit. Motorcycle learner's permit applicants take an automated motorcycle test as well. That is the whole statutory description of it — the number of questions, the passing score and the wording of the questions are DMV's to set, not the General Assembly's.

Which is why these pages do not print a question bank. The examination's questions are not published as an official list, so any site showing you "the real Virginia DMV test questions" is showing you something it made up. What is public is the Virginia Driver's Manual the examination is built from, and DMV's own free practice test. These pages explain the examination, say plainly where the official practice test lives, and set out the one consequence of failing that almost no test site mentions: after a third failure, § 46.2-325 B stops you booking a fourth attempt until you complete a course.

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