How we research the DMV

This is the step-by-step version of the editorial standards — how a single page gets from a question to publication.

1. Start from the primary source

Everything works from official records — chiefly the California Driver Handbook and DMV pages at dmv.ca.gov, the California Vehicle Code at leginfo.legislature.ca.gov, the California MUTCD, and the Bureau of Automotive Repair for smog — plus other official sources where a topic needs them (federal agencies for REAL ID and commercial licensing, the CDTFA for use tax, county courts for suspensions, regional agencies for smog boundaries). If a claim can't be traced to an official source, it doesn't go on the page. Third-party DMV sites are not used.

2. Source it, and cite it on the page

Each page states its facts with the primary source named, and lists those sources at the foot of the page. Fee amounts are drawn from one shared fee file, never typed per page.

3. Lock every number

Specific figures — counts, dollar amounts, distances, limits — are verified against a primary source before publication. A number that can't be verified is left off; a number that verifies but reads as too dated is withheld (as the 2006 renewal-test figure was).

4. Let the build check the mechanical facts

On every build, 23 automated checks run. Twenty fail the build on a correctness defect that could mislead a reader — a wrong fee, a dead form or citation link, a broken internal link, invalid structured data, or a question citing the wrong handbook sentence. Three only warn, flagging design-quality signals in the question bank rather than blocking.

5. Check the citations before merging

Before a change is merged, two more checks run — at merge time, not on every automated build: that each external citation still resolves, and that every quoted sentence appears verbatim in the official document at the place cited. This is a pre-merge step, not a continuous one.

6. For the question bank, separate the work

Drafting a question and verifying its answer are two separate steps: the step that produces a question never signs off its own answer key — the answer is re-derived independently from the handbook — and a blind red-team pass seeds errors to test the checking. Every question cites the handbook sentence it tests.

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