Starting and accelerating — Delaware Permit Test
Starting and accelerating on the Delaware permit test — 3 rules, each with the reason behind it and a question on it while it is fresh.
The rules
Make sure the parking brake is on before you start the vehicle.
A car that lurches when the engine catches can roll into whatever is in front of it.
Make sure the parking brake is on before you start the vehicle.
To start a vehicle with an automatic transmission, you must put the shift selector in park.
A car started in drive jumps forward the moment the engine runs.
For a vehicle that has an automatic transmission, you must put the shift selector in “park.”
Accelerate gradually and smoothly; starting too fast can spin the drive wheels, especially on slippery surfaces, and make the car slide.
Stamping on the gas on a snowy street spins the tires and slides the car sideways into the curb.
Trying to start too fast can cause the drive wheels to spin, particularly on slippery surfaces, and cause the vehicle to slide.
On the test
What should be set before you start the vehicle?
The parking brake. A car that lurches when the engine catches can roll into whatever is in front of it. Delaware Driver Manual, p.113: “Make sure the parking brake is on before you start the vehicle.”
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
- One payment, once — not a subscription. Nothing renews and there is nothing to cancel, for an exam you sit one time.
- Free to start: a 10-question test and the first section of cards. No sign-up and no account.
- Paying opens the rest of the cards, unlimited full-length practice tests, and retests built from exactly the questions you got wrong.
- Every level up to Prepared — 3 tests passed in a row.
- Do the work, fail the real exam, and we refund you.
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)