Practice Driving with Your Colorado Teen

All year: keeping the log

No minor license is issued without a log of 50 hours or more, 10 or more after dark. Paper DR 2324 Drive Time Log Sheets work, and so does the RoadReady app, which you print if the upgrade happens in person.

Write clearly, get the totals right, and have the parent, guardian or responsible adult sign it. A teen who turns 18 before the permit is a year old no longer needs the log.

Two hours a week for a year gets you past 100 hours, so 50 is very achievable. A practical rhythm is one weekday evening drive for the night hours and one weekend drive for highways and parking.

Every drive: who rides along

Practice partners must have reached 21, ride in the seat beside your teen, and be licensed in Colorado, or else be service members whose military ID accompanies a current license from their home state. Solo driving on a permit is never allowed.

The DMV's permit page defines the supervisor by age, license and seat, not by family relationship. Planning to let an aunt, a grandparent or a 23 year old brother ride along instead of the person who signed the DR 2460? Ask the DMV first whether their hours will be accepted.

For younger teens: the six school hours

A teen who files for the license while still short of 16 years and 6 months must drive 6 hours under an approved professional instructor, and those count as part of the 50, not on top.

Do not assume you qualify for the rural exception. It covers only families with no approved school within 30 miles that runs 20 or more in car training hours weekly. Qualifying families add 12 hours (62 total), must upgrade at an office rather than online, and need a printout mapping the drive from their house to the nearest school.

Can a parent do the teaching?

You already carry the bulk of the teaching through the practice log, and the DMV's Driver Education page offers a supervised driving guide written for parents. What you cannot replace are the six professional hours a younger teen owes, unless your family qualifies under the distance exemption.

Online and parent led versions of the 30 hour class exist; before buying one, get both the school and the DMV to confirm it satisfies the permit rule. HB24-1021 also makes in car instructors clear a fingerprint based background check, a fair thing to ask any school about.

On test day: what the examiner scores

Certified commercial driving schools give most road tests, and some county offices do as well. Examiners follow national guidelines and score perception, control of the car and attention through turns, stops, intersections, lane changes, merges and overall driving.

Specific points include keeping inside the lane through a turn, signaling 100 feet ahead in town and 200 feet ahead on four lane highways, stopping completely behind the line, accelerating smoothly, and checking over the shoulder before changing lanes. Driver aids such as a rear camera or lane drift alerts are fine to use, yet the examiner still expects your teen to look.

If your teen fails, and after a pass

Retesting starts the day after a fail, limited to one attempt daily. Every attempt means $15.40 to the state plus the tester's own price. The examiner's score sheet tells you exactly which maneuvers to drill.

Once your teen passes, the upgrade can be done online, provided there is no name change and you did not rely on the distance exemption. Until the card is delivered, inside 30 days, the old permit and the receipt together serve as a temporary license.