#Roommates, many were shocked and outraged when news spread that 20,000 Georgia teens had received their driver’s licenses without taking a road test—a measure put in place to combat the backlog of road test requests following the coronavirus outbreak. Well now, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp has amended the rule and road tests will now be required…and many local teens won’t be happy.
@AJCNews reports, following a massive backlash after his highly controversial decision to allow teenagers to obtain driver’s licenses without first taking a road test, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp issued a new order that now makes roads tests a requirement. Despite 20,000 teens already taking advantage of the order and obtaining their driver’s license online—the new order states that those who received their license in recent weeks must take the appropriate road test by September 30th or their license will be deemed invalid.
The new order also authorizes the state Department of Driver Services to administer the road test while riding with the applicant “or by remote means.” Additionally, it orders the department to “correct public guidance documents” to clarify that “testing was only temporarily suspended” by the previous April 23rd order—and that the erasure of road tests was never meant to be a permanent practice.
Speaking on the new driver’s license order, Governor Kemp had this to say:
“That was always the case, we just wanted to clarify that. Anybody who has gotten the driver’s license but hasn’t taken the test — even if they’ve met the criteria of so many hours on the road and went to driver’s school — they’re still going to have to come back and take the driver’s test.”
While Governor Kemp says that the road tests were only suspended temporarily, the Department of Driver Services says that public outcries from parents led Kemp to change his prior ruling. Meanwhile, Georgia statistics recently suggested that thousands of the new teen drivers might have failed the road test if they had actually taken it—since around 20% of those who take the test fail on their first try.
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