Steering and hand position — Maine Permit Test
Steering and hand position on the Maine permit test — 3 rules, each with the reason behind it and a question on it while it is fresh.
The rules
Put your hands at 9 and 3 or 8 and 4 on the steering wheel, to avoid injury from an air bag and for best control.
Hands at the top of the wheel are flung back into your face when the air bag fires.
Put your hands at 9 and 3 or 8 and 4 to avoid injury from an air bag deployment and for best control.
Steer with your fingers, not your palms, and keep your thumbs up along the face of the steering wheel.
Thumbs hooked inside the rim can be broken when the wheel spins in a crash.
Use your fingers, not the palms of your hands when steering.
For better control, never hold the inside of the steering wheel while driving.
A hand reaching through the wheel gets caught and twisted when the wheel turns fast.
To maintain better vehicle control never hold the inside of the wheel when driving.
On the test
Where does the manual say to put your hands on the steering wheel?
At 9 and 3 or 8 and 4. Hands at the top of the wheel are flung back into your face when the air bag fires. Maine Driver’s License Manual, p.46: “Put your hands at 9 and 3 or 8 and 4 to avoid injury from an air bag deployment and for best control.”
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 Maine Driver’s License Manual, published by the Maine Secretary of State, and against the state code itself. Last checked 2026-10-05.
- src/assets/drivers-manuals/ME.pdf (Maine Driver’s License Manual, Rev 4/24, Maine Secretary of State, Bureau of Motor Vehicles, retrieved 2026-10-04; sha256 pinned in SOURCES.json)
- src/assets/drivers-manuals/ME.pages.txt (scripts/me-text.sh: plain pdftotext except physical 82, which is -layout; the fixture every citation here was cut from and verified against; sha256 pinned in SOURCES.json)
- src/assets/drivers-manuals/ME-exam.html (Maine BMV, Drivers License Exam page, https://www.maine.gov/sos/bmv/driver-licenses-and-ids/car-license/drivers-license-exam, read 2026-10-04; states both exam figures; sha256 pinned under examSource)
- https://www.maine.gov/sos/bmv/driver-licenses-and-ids/car-license/driver-license-manual-and-Maine-motorist-handbook-and-study-guide (read 2026-10-04; links the manual)