Behind the Wheel in South Carolina: Lessons, Practice Hours and Proof

Two requirements, not one

Families often blur the six hours and the 40 hours together. The six are professional lessons, part of the driver education course that Sections 56-1-175 and 56-1-180 require, and only someone with a driver instructor permit under Section 56-23-85 can give them. The 40 are your family's practice with a qualified licensed adult, and they come on top of the course.

Driving cannot happen on a screen. The classroom eight may be taught virtually or remotely, but every behind-the-wheel minute is spent in an actual car on public roads. If your teen holds off until 17, there is no Conditional or Special Restricted license involved, which changes how the course hours apply; the 180 days on the permit still stand.

Before you book: choosing the instructor hours

Some rules for the school's car: the school owns or leases it, insures it to at least the state minimum for liability, and keeps the instructor in it for the whole lesson. Schools usually break the six hours into two or three lessons. They tend to start once your teen is partway through, or done with, the classroom part, beginning in empty lots and side streets and moving up to busier traffic.

Questions worth asking every school: How many sessions make up the six hours? Do you pick up from home or school? Will the instructor take my teen on the interstate? What do extra hours cost? And before paying, find the school on SCDMV's published list of licensed non-commercial driving schools.

During the practice months: who may supervise

Daytime, meaning 6 a.m. to midnight, the person in the front passenger seat must hold a license, be 21 or older and have at least a year of driving behind them. Overnight, midnight to 6 a.m., the bar rises: only a licensed person on the Section 56-1-100 list will do. That list includes parents, guardians, custodians, anyone who has stood in loco parentis for 60 days, and adults holding sworn written permission from one of them.

For the logged 40 hours (10 of them in darkness), Sections 56-1-175 and 56-1-180 point back to that Section 56-1-100 list of people. Put simply, most of the time you record should be with a parent or guardian at your teen's side, or with someone you have given written authority to.

A sample plan: if your teen's permit date is in January, aim for about two hours a week. By early July that is roughly 50 hours, comfortably past 40, with winter evenings already covering much of the night requirement.

Keeping a log that holds up

There is no official log sheet to fill in. What there is: your signature on Form PDLA, which certifies the hours, and an Office of Inspector General at SCDMV that looks into false forms. A simple log of your own is all you need to back that signature up.

Try to go past 40 hours. A teen who has handled rain, dusk and the interstate before the road test finds both the test and the first months alone much less stressful.

• Date, plus start and finish times
• Daylight or dark
• Weather and kind of road (neighborhood, highway, rural)
• What you practiced, for example parking or merging
• Supervisor's name and initials

At the end: Form PDLA

SCDMV accepts one document, and only one, as proof of the course, the 40 hours and school attendance: Form PDLA, officially the Certification of School Attendance, Driver's Education, and Driving Practice. Blank forms are kept by driver training schools and by public and private high schools. Copies floating around online will be rejected, since SCDMV only takes completed forms from authorized issuers.

Questions about the form, or a school refusing to issue it, go to SCDMV's Office of Inspector General at 803-896-9606. Hold off on booking the road test until every part is filled in, since an incomplete form stops the test.

If your teen started in another state

Credit for an out-of-state course is guaranteed: under Sections 56-1-175(E) and 56-1-180(G), SCDMV must accept a completion certificate from a comparable high school driver training course in another state. Gather that certificate and any official log from the old state, then phone SCDMV at 803-896-5000, before your teen finishes the remaining hours, to learn how it will be recorded on Form PDLA.