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What Counts as Night Driving in Pennsylvania?
Yes, you can drive at night with a permit in Pennsylvania, at any hour, with no curfew. Pennsylvania is one of the few states that places no time restriction on when permit holders can drive, as long as a licensed adult (21+) is present.
Pennsylvania’s night definition
Pennsylvania defines night as sunset to sunrise. No fixed clock time. The sun goes down, night starts. The sun comes up, night ends.
In Philadelphia, that means sunset ranges from about 4:40 PM in late December to 8:30 PM in late June, nearly a 4-hour swing across the year. A drive at 5 PM counts as night in December and as day in June. Same time, completely different category depending on the season.
There’s no permit curfew in Pennsylvania. Unlike states such as New York (9 PM cutoff) or North Carolina (same), PA doesn’t restrict what time of night you can practice. If you and a parent want to drive at midnight, nothing in the rules stops you. This also means you can get all your night hours done early in the permit period without worrying about scheduling around curfew windows.
65 hours: the second-highest in the country
Pennsylvania requires 65 total supervised hours. Only Maine, at 70, asks for more. That’s 30% more hours than the national average of around 50.
Out of those 65 hours, 10 need to be at night and 5 need to be in bad weather.
The bad-weather requirement is rare. Only a handful of states have one. Pennsylvania and South Dakota are the most notable. Rain, snow, fog, or ice all count. That means you can’t spend your entire permit period waiting for clear skies. You need to intentionally drive in conditions that most new drivers want to avoid.
Getting all three categories done
Night hours: 10 hours at night sounds manageable, and it is, if you start early. The families who struggle do everything in daylight for five months, then realize they have 8 night hours left with winter approaching. Start your first night drive in month one.
Bad weather: Don’t wait for a blizzard. Light rain on a spring afternoon counts. A 30-minute drizzle drive works. Aim to knock these out in separate sessions spread across the permit period, not all at once. Fog, light snow, and overcast rainy days all qualify. You don’t need dramatic conditions.
Day hours: The remaining 50 are day hours. That’s the bulk of it. Treat these as the baseline and build night and weather sessions around them.
Pennsylvania permit requirements
| Requirement | Details |
|---|---|
| Total supervised hours | 65 |
| Night hours | 10 |
| Bad weather hours | 5 |
| Night definition | Sunset to sunrise |
| Permit age | 16 |
| Hold period | 6 months |
| Supervisor minimum age | 21 |
| Official DMV form | DL-180 |
Practical tips for Pennsylvania
November through February is night-hour season. Sunset before 5 PM means any evening drive after school counts. A commute home at 5:30 PM with a parent is a night hour. Use this window aggressively.
Don’t conflate bad weather with dangerous conditions. The requirement isn’t to drive in a nor’easter. A steady rain during a normal errand is a bad-weather hour. Keep that in mind: you’re building familiarity with imperfect conditions, not proving you can handle emergencies.
No curfew means flexible scheduling. Families with evening schedules (late practices, parents who work late, weekend nights) can log night hours whenever it’s convenient. You’re not racing against a 9 PM cutoff.
December is your best month for efficiency. With sunset around 4:40 PM, every single evening drive after about 4:45 PM counts as night. If you can get two 45-minute drives per week in December, that’s your 10 night hours in roughly 7 weeks.
Log bad weather sessions separately. Some families document weather conditions at the time of the drive, a quick note about rain or snow. The DL-180 form doesn’t have a specific bad-weather field, but having a note makes it easy to verify you met the requirement.
Tracking
Since Pennsylvania’s night hours are tied to sunset time, the night/day split changes every single day. Manual tracking means looking up sunset for your location before every session, then calculating how many minutes of the drive fell after sunset. Most people just guess, and some of those guesses are wrong.
Moda uses GPS and the current date to calculate sunset for your exact location and marks night minutes accurately. Bad weather sessions can be logged manually when you know conditions qualify.
Download: Moda on the App Store
For full Pennsylvania permit requirements, see our Pennsylvania permit hours guide.