TLC Exam Questions and Answers: What's Actually on the Test

The five subject areas

TLC exam questions are drawn from five areas: TLC rules and regulations, safe driving skills and traffic rules, Vision Zero, customer service, and geography. They are not equally weighted in difficulty, and the sections that look easiest are usually where marks are lost.

• TLC Rules and Regulations — licensing, conduct, inspections, penalties.
• Safe Driving Skills and Traffic Rules — NYS traffic law as it applies to a professional driver.
• Vision Zero — the street safety programme and the penalties built on it.
• Customer Service — refusals, accessibility, fares, lost property, passenger rights.
• Geography — boroughs, airports, bridges, expressways and Manhattan's numbering logic.

Rules and regulations: the numbers matter

This section rewards precision. Questions rarely ask whether something is allowed; they ask how long you have, how many points it costs, or what happens on a second offence within a stated window.

The details that come up repeatedly: the minimum age for a TLC driver licence is 19; your application window is 90 days and everything must be completed inside it; the required driver education course is 24 hours; drug testing repeats every year, not just at application, and must be done within the 90 days before your anniversary or expiry date; a TLC driver licence runs for three years.

Traffic rules: don't answer from experience

Experienced drivers lose marks here by answering from habit. The exam wants the legal standard, not what traffic actually does.

The citywide default speed limit is 25 mph unless a sign says otherwise, with lower limits posted in designated slow zones. Every occupant must wear a seat belt in every seating position, front and back, and there is no taxi or livery exemption — the driver is responsible for passengers complying. School zone speed cameras run 24 hours a day, year-round, and the ticket goes to the registered owner, not the driver.

The phone rule that catches everyone

One question appears in some form on almost every version of the exam, and a large share of candidates get it wrong. New York State law bans hand-held phone use. TLC rules go further: a TLC driver must not use an electronic communication device at all while operating the vehicle — hands-free included.

If a question offers 'hands-free is permitted' as an option, it is wrong for a TLC driver. The Passenger Bill of Rights states the same thing from the passenger's side: riders are entitled to a driver who does not use a phone, hand-held or hands-free, while driving.

Vision Zero: one commonly outdated answer

Vision Zero questions focus on the programmes built on top of it, and there is a specific trap here. Older study material describes the Critical Driver Program and the Persistent Violator Program as two separate programmes. They were consolidated in June 2023 — the Critical Driver Program no longer exists separately.

What you need instead is the consolidated structure: within a 15-month window, six or more points can bring a suspension of up to 30 days, and ten or more points can bring revocation. Points count from the date of conviction, and TLC assesses its own points on top of DMV points for the same conduct.

Customer service: refusal is the big one

The rule is absolute in a way that surprises people: a driver must not refuse, by words, gestures or any other means, to take a passenger to any destination within New York City, Westchester or Nassau counties, or Newark Airport. Asking a passenger's destination before they are seated is also prohibited, with narrow exceptions.

Penalties escalate steeply and are mandatory in structure — a third refusal within 36 months carries revocation. Expect questions on service animals (always accepted), assisting wheelchair users, and accepting credit cards for any fare amount with no minimum and no surcharge.

Geography: know the connectors

Geography questions typically give you a pickup point and a destination and ask for the nearest expressway or the best route. You do not need every street; you need the connectors and a compass sense of the city.

Know which highway serves which area — the Van Wyck for JFK, the Grand Central Parkway for LaGuardia — and Manhattan's numbering: numbered streets run east–west and rise going north; numbered avenues run north–south and rise going west; Fifth Avenue divides East from West addresses.