Northwest Driving School

The Kenny Family: Three Generations of Driver Education

Patrick Kenny grew up in Las Vegas, played sports at the Meadows School in Summerlin, and started working at his family’s driving school at age thirteen. His father John Kenny founded Northwest Driving & Traffic School in 2001 with a straightforward premise: driver education in the Las Vegas Valley did not have to feel like a trip to the DMV. John brought the business instincts; Patrick brought the energy of someone who had grown up watching the operation from the inside. Over the next two decades, what started as a single location on Smoke Ranch Road became the most prolific driving school in Southern Nevada, with more than 50,000 students trained and a 98% pass rate on driving exams. All five Kenny siblings — Patrick, Stephanie, Thomas, Michael, and Stephen — are involved in the business, making Northwest one of the few truly family-run educational operations in the valley.

Northwest Driving School is DMV-certified under license number PRDS00045079 and offers teen driver education, adult driving lessons, behind-the-wheel training, traffic school for ticket dismissal, and corporate fleet safety programs. The school’s instructors are state-licensed and conduct lessons across the northwest valley, where the mix of residential streets, highway on-ramps, and commercial corridors gives students real-world experience in the driving conditions they will actually face. The headquarters at 7398 Smoke Ranch Road sits just off US-95, in a stretch of northwest Las Vegas that has grown from open desert to one of the most densely developed residential corridors in the valley since the school first opened its doors.

Northwest Driving School in the Las Vegas Valley

The Kenny family is one of the most established educational families in Southern Nevada. Beyond the driving school, the Kennys founded Northwest Career College and Northwest Education, building a network of vocational and professional programs rooted in the same community where they live and operate. That local investment matters in a city where many educational services are run by out-of-state corporations with no stake in the outcome. Northwest Driving School has trained a generation of Las Vegas drivers — over 50,000 and counting — and the family behind it shows no signs of stepping away from the wheel.

Owner

Patrick Kenny (CEO), John Kenny (co-founder)

Founded

2001

Address

7398 Smoke Ranch Rd, Ste 0268, Las Vegas, NV 89128

Phone

(702) 212-5667

Website

northwestdrivingschool.com