“Another day helping people get their driver’s license in New Jersey,” reads a Facebook post in the group “LATINOS IN NEW BRUNSWICK.” “When it comes to results, we are the best! We have helped more than 2,400 people in all of New Jersey. Call Now! The instructor with the most experience!”
This Spanish-language post is one of many like it on the social media platform in groups catering to the Latino population in New Jersey with vital messages and classifieds about various services. But when it comes to driving lessons, there is a hidden problem.
That "most-experienced instructor"? He isn't running a licensed driving school. His whole business, and the others like it, is illegal, one of many that have popped up in recent years.
Still the instructor, who posts under the name Juan, is getting business. Other driving instructors see him at the Eatontown Motor Vehicle Commission testing location day after day, bringing new students to take the driver’s test.
“I go to the same place every day, you can see the same [unlicensed instructors]," a driving school owner who brings students to the same location told Streetsblog. The instructor asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from both the unlicensed schools and the Motor Vehicle Commission, New Jersey's version of a DMV.
"[The unlicensed schools] use social media, which makes it easy for the illegal schools to get people’s attention. This guy who posts, ‘I’m the best instructor’ doesn't have any certification.”
Unlicensed driving schools operate in the shadows, avoiding the strict regulations New Jersey has in place to ensure public safety. For a driving school to operate legally, owners and instructors must meet a laundry list of requirements, go through background checks, have a special car complete with a passenger-side brake, maintain expensive insurance policies, and pay registration fees. Some of the unlicensed schools are able to seem legitimate, with their logos, customer testimonials and social media presence. And, of course, a passenger-side brake is easy to order online.
Schools like Rojas’s are cutting into the business of licensed driving schools, but, more alarming, is the potential toll it takes on road safety, as well as the integrity of the profession. Those who run state-licensed schools in the Garden State have repeatedly sounded the alarm to the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission and elected officials with no response, and they want answers.
Tied up with immigration
Veteran driving school owners claim that the sharp increase in illegal schools began after New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed legislation to allow undocumented New Jersey residents to get driver’s licenses — a key move for immigrant rights, as well as a way to foster road safety by reducing unlicensed or uninsured driving.
“Allowing residents the opportunity to obtain driver’s licenses regardless of their immigration status will decrease the number of uninsured drivers and increase safety on our roads,” Murphy said in 2019.
The move did make sure that drivers, regardless of immigration status, are able to get insurance and get registered by the state, but it also created a shadow industry: Suddenly new driving schools popped up, advertised on Facebook and in person in Spanish and Portuguese, promising a passing grade on the test.
The victims of this scam are newcomers or undocumented immigrants who oftentimes don’t know any better or don't want to draw attention to themselves or their status.
“It’s mostly in the Latino community. [The schools] play on lack of information in the community,” said the anonymous school owner, who is also Latino and speaks Spanish. “I don’t think it’s their fault, I think it’s the MVC's fault because they don’t do anything. Because they already know.”
One New Jersey resident, Ana, who came to the U.S. from El Salvador around 10 years ago, took a class with an unlicensed school she found on Facebook so she could get her license and be able to legally drive her son to soccer practice. She told Streetsblog the instructor didn’t have any teaching skills.
The instructor posts frequently in the group HISPANOS EN NEW JERSEY, writing that he has a "100% success rate" and even posting videos of the students who pass the test under his instruction.
“I thought it was a school, but when I got there it was just a normal car ... nothing was prepared for teaching,” said Ana in Spanish. “I just wanted to practice parking. He didn't have the patience to explain it to me. He didn’t give me any confidence. I got in the car and he just told me to drive.”
Ana later changed to a licensed school because she didn't feel comfortable taking the test after her lesson with the unlicensed instructor and immediately noticed a difference.
“When I went to the better school, I said, 'Wow what a difference, how professional.' I passed [the test] with the other school,” she said.
Licensed driving school owners and instructors say that Ana's experience is common.
“Over the years there have always been people teaching on the side. But not at the scale that it is now,” said Alissia Alfaro, who has been running Ideal Driving School with her husband in New Jersey since 1987.
“It's rampaging all over the state. You go to any DMV, and [unlicensed instructors] show up to the road tests with five students, then they come back later with another three or four students.
"We have so many regulations. We have to renew our licenses every year. And these people come in and they just get a driver's license and they think, 'You know what, I'm going to teach driving.' But who the hell are you to teach driving?” she added.
Around two years ago, when the problem reached a breaking point, Alfaro founded the New Jersey Driving School Council to organize her fellow official driving school small business owners to fight back against the proliferation of the unlicensed businesses.
The Council has around 60 members who shared information with Streetsblog about the problem as well as the organization’s correspondence, mostly unanswered, with the MVC’s driving school licensing office in Trenton.
Safeguards don't apply
The New Jersey driving school license was created as part of major reforms of the driver education system in 2000.
The law regulated the learner’s permit process, in turn creating licensed driving schools, which themselves were shaped by studies and traffic data to make sure that driving schools are safe and promoting safety. In the latest update of the driving school laws, in 2010, the state began to require physical offices, service agreements between students and schools, and required that all instructors complete an MVC-approved defensive driving course.
Jersey residents can start to drive when they turn 16 – but there’s a process. Teens have to be either taking their school’s “driver’s ed” course or be enrolled in a licensed driving school in order to get the special permit to learn to drive. Students must complete six hours of behind-the-wheel instruction in a dual-controlled vehicle with a licensed driving instructor before taking the road test.
For those over 17, which would be the situation with most new immigrants settling in Jersey, the regulations are less strict: three to six months of practice with a permit before the road test. But those drivers are not required to be enrolled in a licensed school.
Any licensed driver can help someone learn to drive, but as soon as that person starts advertising as a school and accepting payment for its services, that’s when it becomes illegal.
“If I want to give a friend legal advice and I’m not a lawyer, I can,” said Gary Spivak, a licensed driving school owner and member of the New Jersey Driving School Council. “But as soon as I take in money in exchange for that advice, I’m pretending to be a lawyer, and that’s illegal. It’s the same with the driving schools.”
Hiding in plain sight
Driving school owners who spoke to Streetsblog said they are most frustrated by the fact that unlicensed instruction is so obvious — yet nothing is done.
The MVC ignored most of Streetsblog's specific questions about what exactly the agency was doing to combat this practice. Instead, it put the onus on the customer to discern which schools are authorized, and which are not.
"New Jersey residents should only utilize the services of driving schools and agents that are properly licensed and operating in accordance with New Jersey law. On its website, the MVC offers an updated list of licensed driving schools for the public, although MVC is not affiliated with any of the schools and does not endorse any specific school, employee, or agent," a spokesperson said in an emailed statement to Streetsblog.
MVC workers told Streetsblog that they know the instructors from the unlicensed schools but aren’t able to stop them because, technically, any licensed driver is allowed to bring people to the testing site.
“It is true that you can take your cousin and you can take your aunt and you can take your brother to the road test, but you cannot have 1,000 cousins, 1,000 aunts and 1,000 brothers,” said Alfaro. "These people are there, bluntly, just doing business and taking money and nobody's doing anything about it."
MVC driving test administrators, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of losing their jobs, said they are well aware of the prolific problem, but they are told by their supervisors that they cannot turn people away from taking the test if they have the proper paperwork.
But veterans of the industry are concerned about the quality of instruction. The road test in New Jersey is notoriously short. Often, it is done on a closed course where drivers don't need to contend with the unpredictability of the streets.
“They're not teaching anything,” said Alfaro. “One of the biggest issues that we have in the state of New Jersey is that the road test is very very short."
Other driving school instructors say they feel incentivized to go beyond what is required by the test in their instruction. But their unlicensed counterparts advertise as a quick way to pass, not a comprehensive education.
“They don’t actually care to give them driving instruction, all they want to do is pass them. So if they bring people to the test that they pass, but they actually don’t really know how to drive, that’s a massive problem,” said Yosef, another driving school owner and member of the council who asked to be referred to by just his first name. "As driving schools, we encourage students to take lessons until they are comfortable driving, that’s how we promote driving safety across New Jersey."
Official policy: Ignore the problem
Multiple driving school owners told Streetsblog they repeatedly tell MVC employees about the problem and get told that nothing can be done.
“Every time I go [to the MVC] there are illegal instructors there, and I always make it a point to tell the people who work at the testing site and they always say there is nothing they can do,” said Yosef.
New Jersey State Sen. Brian Stack was outraged when he heard about the proliferation of unlicensed schools. He even sent a letter to MVC’s acting chair, Latrecia Littles-Floyd, calling for stricter enforcement against the schools.
"Licensed and unregistered individuals offering driving lessons [pose] a serious threat to the safety and wellbeing of our residents, as these instructors may lack the necessary qualifications, knowledge, and experience to provide adequate training,” the letter said.
But the request went unanswered. As did two more letters directly from the Driving School Council to Littles-Floyd, which also had attached examples of the advertisements from the unregistered schools.
