GoKunming Forums

Driving License In Kunming ?!?!

onlyurei (33 posts) • 0

Remind me of the summer break after high school before college...had to go to the stupid driving school and practice for 1.5 month to be qualified to take the driving test.

It was around 3K RMB for the driving school tuition, plus paying for the instructor's portion of the shared lunch gatherings everyday.

Payed $17 USD in total when I came to the US for both the written and driving test and the driver's license.

But due to China's crazy traffic pattern I can understand the reasoning behind the mandatory driving school attendance in order to get the license. However I bet most if not all driving school instructors in China probably teach the student drivers to do exactly those kind of the road aggressions and bad habits that required them to attend the school in the first place. Seems to be a deadlock situation.

yankee00 (1632 posts) • 0

I went there today. According to my phone's map, the closest subway station is XiaoDongCun. A short taxi ride will most likely be needed to get to the center.

DanTheMan (620 posts) • 0

Can take bus 2 to rail station and then switch to K12. There are a few other options as well.

I just went today and signed up. A few clarifications. Do not need photocopy of official translation of your license (they keep the original). I only needed three photos, but they are smaller than passport photos and I'm not sure passport photos would have been accepted.

They told me that they didn't have a copy of the test questions :-(

My test is Tuesday morning. Anybody have a link for the English set of test questions that roughly resembles the translation used at the Kunming testing center?

Alexez (349 posts) • 0

Dan I think coz they have lots of foggy days here ( not in KM particularly but Yunnan generally ) . When I was checking driving test in SZ,they were obsessed with heavy rains ( like what speed or distance should keep during the heavy rain and poor visibility etc. ),altho I would assume the test content should be same in all China. I believe north side have obsession with the snow driving:-)

DanTheMan (620 posts) • 0

Passed first try with a score of 97.

Process is still pretty much the same as was outlined earlier in this thread, but seems Foreigners can go any day, not just Thursday. If you wanted to try to get it all done in one day you could show up promptly at 9am to do your eye check, etc. and then see if a slot is open for testing later in the morning. Otherwise you'll have to come back another day. Unfortunately I will have to go back a third time because the computers were having problems and they weren't able to print my license on the spot after I successfully completed my test.

Though I don't have the physical license or licenses in hand, it appears I was able to carry over the motorcycle endorsement on my American license through only completing the standard Chinese C1 license test in English.

For studying, I found chinese-driving-test.com/test/ to be an adequate resource to stumble through the test. I just kept taking practice tests and copying answers I got wrong into a word document. Then every once in a while I stopped and did further review on the questions in the word document I had gotten wrong. Some questions are just plain confusing, even if you find the equivalent question in Chinese. There's some shit about continuing forward at night even if you're blinded by an oncoming car's high beams because it somehow protects pedestrians. Whatever...the answer to the question is "correct". There's a few like that. I found traffic police hand signals, speed limits on different types of roads and the various fines, penalties and points imposed for different infractions to be the most vexing. Also, was interested to learn that if two cars are approaching an intersection and trying to turn into the same road, the driver making the left turn actually has right of way, which is opposite to the US.

All of this is a little immaterial considering, as someone else mentioned, that nobody follows the rules and nobody would have a license after one day if the point system were actually rigorously enforced. Oh well.

I would make sure you're consistently scoring 97 to 100 on the Chinese Driving Test website before you take the actual test...there's several on the actual test that I didn't encounter on the website, on which a few of I had to take wild guesses.

Here's a few notes I took about the most fussy detail-oriented types of questions you might find useful if you're studying for the test:

-Safe follow distance = at least 100 meters at over 100km/h at least 50m at or under 100km/h?

-No stopping: 30 meters for gas or fire station. 50m for intersection, tunnel, bridge, embankment, sharp curve

-Oil light is only for low oil pressure?

-White numbers painted on road are minimum speed limits, yellow are maximum

-Rural road with no line, 40km/h Urban road with no line, 30 km/h, rural road with center line, 70 km/h, urban road with dividing line, 50km/h

-120km/h highway left lane=100-120km/h, center lane minimum 90 km/h

-rain, fog, snow, ice or when visibility less than 50 meters, 30km/h level crossing, narrow road or bridge, 30km/h sharp curve, 30km/h

-major traffic accident with heavy property loss may get prison term of less than 3 years or criminal detention. Major accident, death, run away more than 7 years

-dashed center line is indicative marking while solid line is prohibitive marking.

Related forum threads

Login to post