Adjust seat and mirrors — Delaware Permit Test
Adjust seat and mirrors on the Delaware permit test — 4 rules, each with the reason behind it and a question on it while it is fresh.
The rules
Adjust your seat so you are high enough to see the road clearly, using a seat cushion if necessary.
A short driver who sits too low cannot see the child crossing just past the hood.
Adjust your seat so that you are high enough to clearly see the road.
Your seat should be positioned about 12 inches from the steering wheel.
Sitting with your chest against the wheel puts you in the path of the air bag when it bursts open.
Seating should be positioned approximately 12 inches from the steering wheel.
A good side-mirror setting is one where, leaning forward slightly, you can see just the side of your own vehicle.
Mirrors aimed mostly at your own car show you nothing of the car pulling up beside you.
A good adjustment for the side mirrors is to set them so that when you lean forward slightly, you can see just the side of your vehicle.
Head restraints are designed to prevent whiplash if you are hit from behind, and should be adjusted so they contact the back of your head.
A head restraint set down at the neck lets the head snap back over it in a rear-end crash.
They should be adjusted so the head restraint contacts the back of your head.
On the test
What does the manual suggest if you cannot sit high enough to see the road clearly?
Sit on a seat cushion. A short driver who sits too low cannot see the child crossing just past the hood. Delaware Driver Manual, p.108: “Adjust your seat so that you are high enough to clearly see the road.”
How this works
Most practice tests hand you a bank of questions and leave the manual somewhere else. This one puts them together.
You read one law and the reason behind it, then answer a question on that law while it is still fresh. Get it right and you move on; get it wrong and you have found the gap while it is cheap to fix, not on the morning of the exam.
Learning one rule at a time, and proving it immediately, is what turns a manual you skimmed into something you actually know — and it makes studying feel like getting somewhere rather than like waiting to find out.
What it costs
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Where these come from
Every rule here is checked against Delaware Driver Manual, published by the Delaware Division of Motor Vehicles, and against the state code itself. Last checked 2026-10-05.
- src/assets/drivers-manuals/DE.pdf (Delaware Driver Manual, July 2026, Delaware Division of Motor Vehicles, retrieved 2026-09-14; sha256 pinned in SOURCES.json)
- src/assets/drivers-manuals/DE.pages.txt (scripts/de-text.sh: plain pdftotext cropped to keep the section tab out, physical 47 under -layout; the fixture every citation here was cut from and verified against; sha256 pinned in SOURCES.json)
- src/assets/drivers-manuals/DE-exam.html (Delaware Division of Motor Vehicles, Driver's License Exam, https://dmv.de.gov/DriverServices/drivers_license/index.shtml?dc=dr_lic_written, read 2026-10-05; states both exam figures; sha256 pinned under examSource)
- https://dmv.de.gov/menu/forms_manuals.shtml (read 2026-10-05; links the manual)
- https://dmv.de.gov/DriverServices/faqs/index.shtml?dc=dr_faq_general (read 2026-10-05; its 30 and 24 are the exam page's figures before 2024-12, per the Internet Archive)