Vehicle check brakes and lights — Delaware Permit Test
Vehicle check brakes and lights on the Delaware permit test — 4 rules, each with the reason behind it and a question on it while it is fresh.
The rules
It is the duty of drivers to make certain that the vehicles they drive are safe to operate.
A borrowed car with bad brakes is still the driver's problem when it cannot stop in time.
It is the duty of drivers to make certain that the vehicles they drive are safe to operate.
If your brakes make a lot of noise, smell funny, or the pedal goes to the floor, have a mechanic check them.
Only your brakes can stop the car, and a pedal that sinks to the floor may stop working entirely.
If they do not seem to be working properly, are making a lot of noise, smell funny, or the brake pedal goes to the floor, have a mechanic check them.
Turn signals, brake lights, taillights and headlights should be checked from the outside of the vehicle.
From the driver's seat you cannot tell that a brake light is out and the car behind gets no warning.
These should be checked from the outside of the vehicle.
If you have trouble seeing at night, or other drivers keep flashing their headlights at you, have a mechanic check your headlights.
A headlight aimed too high shines into oncoming eyes while leaving the road ahead of you dark.
If you are having trouble seeing at night or if other drivers are constantly flashing their headlights at you, have a mechanic check the headlights.
On the test
In Delaware, whose duty is it to make sure a vehicle is safe to operate?
The driver who is driving it. A borrowed car with bad brakes is still the driver's problem when it cannot stop in time. Delaware Driver Manual, p.105: “It is the duty of drivers to make certain that the vehicles they drive are safe to operate.”
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)