Outside the Registry of Motor Vehicles in Watertown, three Ugandan students sit in a van waiting to take a road test.
"Our appointment for the test is now," one of the students said. "We’re still waiting. We’re still waiting."
But not for long, because the van belongs to a driving school — and sure enough, they were off on their road test minutes later. Compare that to the experience of Neşe Lortlar-Ünlü of Newton. She got up early one recent morning to take her road test — after waiting for six weeks.
If you’re trying to get a drivers license and have to schedule a road test, expect to wait several weeks or even months to get a slot. But an investigation by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting in conjunction with WGBH News determined that you can get tested much sooner if you’re willing to pay for it.
Lortlar-Ünlü had scheduled a road test at 9 a.m. and went to Watertown at 8:45. But two hours later, Lortlar-Ünlü, a doctor from Turkey, was still waiting.
"It was not clear to us how long we would have to wait for the test," she said.
But while Lortlar-Ünlü and her sponsor sat on the curb waiting, they watched other individuals — like the Ugandan students, who had just arrived, being called up to take the test. WGBH News visited the Watertown RMV to inquire about the different treatment — and got nowhere.
"We don’t answer questions from reporters," an RMV employee said.
But a pattern of preferential treatment does exist. That’s what WGBH News and the New England Center for Investigative Reporting found after looking at RMV records and speaking to RMV clients and driving schools. Here’s how it works: The RMV employs 42 instructors statewide and averages 4,500 road tests a week. The average wait time to get a test is often more than a month, but if you sign up with one of the state’s 300 or so driving schools, you can expect to take the road test a lot sooner. And there’s a catch.
"It’s a $20 convenience fee, which is in addition to the $35 road test fee," said Erin Deveney, the state's interim registrar.
It’s actually a lot more expensive than that. WGBH News and NECIR asked Deveney: Why does the registry allows individuals to essentially cut the line if they pay the $20 convenience fee, plus another $55 to $175 to the driving school?
"We do not require applicants to use a driving school to take their road test," Deveney said. "It is ultimately the consumer’s choice how they take their road test with us."
One driver’s school website promises, “You won’t have to wait weeks and months to book a road test. You won’t have to miss school or work … We will take care of that.” Some state officials defend this preferential treatment and liken it to paying first class to fly.
"It’s appalling," Northeastern University legal scholar Daniel Medwed said. "This is a classic pay-to-play system."
Medwed dismisses any comparison between driving schools and air travel.
"Air travel is a private service," he said. "You want to get from A to B through the air. You choose to do that. You go through a private carrier. You can have tiers of passengers based on ability to pay."
But Medwed says government should not be in the business of creating tiers of service.
"The state's interest in licensing car drivers is designed to protect the public because your ability to drive on the road could impact other potential citizens who are also on the road," he said. "So that public service is not something that I think lends itself readily or seamlessly to creating tiers of citizens. That flouts the very idea of equal access."
Deveney says the practice of setting aside test slots just for driving school customers helps everyone.
"It’s a more efficient process for us," she said. "The more tests we administer in this program makes more slots available for other customers who don’t participate with the driving school."
But what the Registry sees as efficient, Lortlar-Ünlü sees as unfair — recalling the driving school students who were tested while she waited.
"They came, one by one, 10, 15 people," Neşe Lortlar-Ünlü said. "And they took the test — very, very quick time, maybe in five or seven minutes and they passed."
Lortlar-Ünlü could well afford to pay a driving school for quicker access, but says on principal she would not. Nor should she, says Medwed.
"Even if it is technically legal, I think it’s something we should take a close look at and consider abolishing," Medwed said.
But that may be unlikely as the Registry makes a lot of money from the arrangement. In 2014, the RMV set aside 56,000 test slots for driving schools and collected nearly $1.2 million in return. But Deveney denies that revenue is the motivation.
"The applicants that come through driving schools, unfortunately they’re having to wait as well," she said. "So there should not be the impression that the registry is magically making road tests available solely for our driving school population."
Still, the practice has grown, and nearly 25 percent of roughly 225,000 road tests in the state each year are done through driving schools. And the Registry acknowledges that the wait is a lot shorter if you pay to go through a driving school.
