South Dakota supervised driving
How to fill out South Dakota’s Supervised Driving Log
South Dakota asks for 50 hours, and then does something almost no other state does: it requires 10 of them in inclement weather, alongside the more familiar 10 after dark. The log is built around that, with three minute columns per row — Inclement Weather, Night and Day. Reading them as three separate buckets is the mistake the whole sheet turns on, because they are not.
Count in minutes, across three columns
-
Work in minutes, not hours
Every column is headed Minutes, and the TOTALS row ends in Total Minutes. A forty-minute session is 40 here — not 0.67, and not 0:40. Fifty hours is 3,000 minutes, which is the number the sheet is quietly counting toward.
-
Split each date into Night and Day
These two are the split that adds up: a date’s Night Minutes plus its Day Minutes make its whole practice. Ten hours of the fifty have to fall in the Night column.
-
Treat Inclement Weather as an overlay, not a third bucket
This is where the form is misread. Inclement Weather Minutes is not practice that happened instead of day or night driving — it is however much of that date’s driving happened in bad conditions, counted again in its own column. Twenty minutes after dark in the rain puts 20 in Night and 20 in Inclement Weather. Adding all three columns together will always overshoot.
-
Fill the left table before the right
The sheet carries two tables side by side, each with its own TOTALS row. They are one continuous list — fill the left down to its last row, then carry on at the top of the right, and total each block separately.
-
Have a parent or guardian attest in writing
There is no signature line on the log. South Dakota requires a parent or legal guardian to attest in writing that the requirements were met, separately from the sheet, before the minor can apply for the restricted minor’s permit under SDCL 32-12-11. The log is the evidence behind that statement rather than the statement itself.
A wet evening drive, counted twice over
Take January 5: twenty minutes of practice in the afternoon and twenty more after dark, all of it in steady rain. Rows are per date, so both sessions land on one line.
- Date
- 01/05/2026
- Day Minutes
- 20
- Night Minutes
- 20
- Inclement Weather Minutes
- 40 — all of it was in the rain
- Skills Practiced
- Parking, Turns
- TOTALS — Total Minutes
- 40 for the date; Night 20, Day 20, Inc. Weather 40
Note what Total Minutes is: 40, which is Night plus Day. It is not 80, even though the three columns hold 20, 20 and 40 between them. The same forty minutes is doing double duty — advancing the 50-hour total once, and the 10-hour inclement-weather requirement at the same time. That is the sheet working as intended, not a double count.
What leaves a South Dakota log short
- Adding Inclement Weather, Night and Day together to get the total, which overstates the practice — only Night and Day sum to it.
- Subtracting bad-weather driving out of the Day or Night column, which understates both and makes the 50-hour total arrive late.
- Writing decimal hours or an H:MM figure into columns headed Minutes, so 0.67 or 0:40 appears where 40 belongs.
- Reaching 50 hours with no inclement-weather driving recorded, which leaves ten of the required hours unmet no matter how much total practice was logged — a real risk for anyone who only drives in good conditions.
- Assuming a signature on the log finishes the job, when South Dakota asks for a separate written attestation from a parent or legal guardian.
What fills the three minute columns
The export writes one row per calendar date, with a date’s drives summed onto a single line:
| On the Supervised Driving Log (parent attests in writing) | Comes from |
|---|---|
| Student Name | The student’s name at the top of the sheet — the only identifying field the log carries. |
| Date | The practice date, with several drives that day combined rather than split across rows. |
| Day Minutes / Night Minutes | That date’s daylight and after-dark practice in whole minutes. Together they make the date’s total. |
| Inclement Weather Minutes | The full length of that date’s drives you tagged as inclement — the tag covers rain, snow, ice and fog. It overlaps the Day and Night figures rather than being taken out of them, and a date with no inclement driving is left blank rather than zeroed. |
| Skills Practiced | The skills tagged against that date’s drives, joined to fit the cell. |
| TOTALS | Each table totals its own rows into Inc. Weather, Night, Day and Total Minutes, where Total Minutes is Night plus Day. |
Nothing on the sheet is signed, because the sheet has nowhere to sign. The written attestation from a parent or legal guardian is a separate document, and it is what the DPS actually relies on.
Frequently asked questions
Do the three minute columns add up to the total?
No — only Night and Day do. Inclement Weather Minutes records how much of that same driving happened in bad conditions, so it overlaps the other two. A wet evening drive counts in Night and again in Inclement Weather, and the total counts it once.
What counts as inclement weather?
Neither the log nor SDCL 32-12-11 says. Both require ten of the fifty hours in inclement weather and leave the term undefined, so the judgement is the certifying parent’s. Rain, snow, ice and fog are the conditions treated as inclement here, and are the reading most people would recognise — but if a session is borderline, the sensible move is to note the actual conditions rather than rely on a category.
Why is the log in minutes?
Because every column says so: Inclement Weather Minutes, Night Minutes, Day Minutes, Total Minutes. Fifty hours is 3,000 minutes, and keeping the sheet in its own unit avoids the rounding drift that creeps in when sessions get converted one at a time.
Who is allowed to supervise the practice?
A parent, a legal guardian, or a licensed driver over the age of eighteen with at least one year of driving experience. The log itself has no column for who supervised, so that condition is met rather than recorded.
Where do I sign the South Dakota log?
Nowhere — the sheet has no signature line. A parent or legal guardian attests in writing, separately, that the instruction-permit requirements were met, and that attestation is what precedes applying for the restricted minor’s permit.
Track your South Dakota hours
Log every supervised drive and Learner Log keeps the totals ready for the Supervised Driving Log (parent attests in writing).
Still deciding how to keep the record? Compare paper against an app. Not sure where the Supervised Driving Log (parent attests in writing) ends up? See submitting a log versus certifying the hours.
Official sources: Official Supervised Driving Log (parent attests in writing). South Dakota licensing instructions. This guide was last reviewed against the official form on ; South Dakota can change its form or instructions at any time, so confirm the current version at the links above. Learner Log is an independent tracking tool, not affiliated with any licensing agency.