Content changes

This is the record of what changed in the content of PermitKeys, newest first: states that went up, new guides and data pages, and corrections to questions, explanations and guides. It leaves out changes to the design or the code that do not change what you read. How each change is checked before it goes up is described on the methodology page.

October 18, 2026

• New York published: the practice test, the question bank with 100 questions, each with its explanation and the page of the manual it comes from, and a section-by-section summary of the New York State Driver's Manual. The New York page sets out the path from the learner permit to the license with the manual page behind each step, and a study plan by topic.
• Each practice test page now describes how that state's written test is given, from its manual: languages, attempts, what is allowed during the test, and the page behind each point.

October 10, 2026

• How to get a California learner's permit now says which two steps you can finish from home before the office visit, the application and the appointment, and that the drive test is booked as its own appointment (page 5).
• Fixed a stray space before the punctuation in a few sentences on the about, methodology, guides, changes and California pages. No rule changed.

October 6, 2026

• New methodology page: where the questions come from, how they are reviewed, the review seal, the ten-word limit on handbook wording, how our practice format relates to the official test and where the figures on the data pages come from.
• This changes page.
• The contact page now explains what to include when you report an error, so that we can find the question and the handbook page quickly.
• Two new California guides, on the steps of getting a license: How to get a California learner's permit and The California behind-the-wheel drive test.
• The California page now sets out the path to a license in order, from the permit to the provisional license, with the handbook page behind each requirement, followed by a study plan that takes you through the guides, the questions and the handbook summary one topic at a time.
• The California question bank opens each topic with a short note on what its questions ask, the handbook pages they come from, and links to the guide and the handbook summary section for that topic.
• Each of the three data pages has a worked example. The ticket costs page takes two tickets apart line by line, with the law behind each charge; the crash causes page reads one row of the ranking from start to finish; and the teen driver page works out the shortest timeline from the permit to the end of the provisional period. On the ticket page, a sentence that credited the base fines to the Vehicle Code now credits the statewide bail schedule, which is where those amounts are set.
• The handbook summary now says, in its point on the provisional license, that this is the license issued to drivers under 18 (page 4).
• The California question bank now has 198 questions, each with its explanation and handbook page.
• Removed the clean air vehicle decal from the carpool lane rules in the handbook summary and in Turns, lanes, passing and parking in California. The handbook (page 16) still lists decal vehicles, but the DMV ended the decal program on September 30, 2025, so a decal no longer lets a solo driver use a carpool lane.
• Three road sign games: a memory game, a matching game and a one-minute sprint, each with the full list of signs and what they mean.
• The guides page opens with a short introduction on the two kinds of guide and the order in which to use them.

September 30, 2026

• Corrected the provisional license section of License, points and insurance in California. It said that both restrictions on a provisional license end after a set time, and it gave the passenger rule the same time limit as the night rule. In the handbook (page 4) only the night rule carries that limit; the passenger rule has none. The section now says so.

September 29, 2026

• Three data pages for California, each built from an official dataset: what a traffic ticket costs in full, from the Judicial Council's 2026 bail and penalty schedule; the traffic laws behind California crashes, from the Highway Patrol's 2024 crash records; and why the provisional license has a curfew and a passenger rule, from the national fatal crash census and license counts.
• California road signs, signals and pavement markings now shows public domain drawings of the signs it describes, based on the federal sign manual, and a short "Name that sign" review.
• Small rewording in three guides (safe driving, turns and parking and what the test covers) to make a few summaries and sentences plainer. No rule changed.
• The about page now explains how each question is checked against its cited page and what happens when a reviewed question is edited.

September 26, 2026

• Four new California guides, one for each topic of the question bank that did not have one: Turns, lanes, passing and parking in California, Sharing the road in California, Safe driving and emergencies in California and License, points and insurance in California. With them, every question page can link to the guide that covers its rule.
• The seven guides published the day before used British spelling in places (colour, licence, kerb, manoeuvre). They now use American spelling, which is also what the handbook uses.
• Each question page now has its own search description, written from its answer and explanation, instead of one shared by every question on the same topic.

September 25, 2026

• California published: the practice test, the question bank with an explanation for every question, and a section-by-section summary of the handbook with the page behind each point. All of it is written from the June 2025 edition of the California Driver's Handbook.
• The guides section opened with seven guides. Three apply to any state: How to study for your permit test, How to read a permit test question and What a written permit test covers. Four cover California: California road signs, signals and pavement markings, Right of way in California: who goes first, California speed limits and the basic speed law and California alcohol and drug rules for drivers. Every handbook point in a state guide names its page.
• Fourteen California questions had a citation that stopped just short of something the explanation relies on, such as an exception or the last steps of a list. Their citations were extended to cover every fact the explanation states. In all fourteen the fact was in the handbook, so no explanation had to be cut.
• Each question page now links to four other questions on the same topic and, where the topic already had a guide, to that guide.

Before California went up (September 21 to 23, 2026)

These changes happened while the California bank was being written, before any of it was public. We list them because they explain how the questions you see today were shaped.

• September 21. The first California questions were drafted from the June 2025 handbook, each with its section and page, and went through their first review against the cited page.
• September 23. We measured every explanation and every point of the handbook summary against the full handbook text. Fifty explanations and three summary points repeated more than ten words in a row, and a second reading of the handbook PDF found one more explanation. All of them were rewritten in our own words, and the same check now runs before every publication. Every rewritten question lost its seal and was reviewed again: in that review, twelve were corrected where the new wording had drifted from what the handbook says, for example a "may" that had become firmer, or a time limit that had spread to a second rule.
• September 23. The practice test pages stopped reading as if they gave the length of the official test. They now say how many questions each attempt of our practice test draws, and nothing about the length of the state's own exam.
• September 23. Three questions were changed after an audit of the wrong options. In two, a wrong option gave a stricter number than the rule: registering a car within 10 days when the handbook allows 20, and keeping 500 feet behind a fire engine when the limit is 300. A stricter number is still a wrong answer to the question asked, so both options were valid; they were replaced anyway, with 30 days and 200 feet. In the third, the explanation opened with a claim about open containers that the handbook does not make. When the three were reviewed again, the new options stayed, and two explanations were tightened where they said more than the handbook does.

Found something to correct?

Corrections from readers are the most useful messages we get. The contact page explains what to send so that we can check it against the handbook quickly. A correction that changes a question, an explanation or a guide will appear on this page with its date.