Windshields and windows — Minnesota Permit Test
Windshields and windows on the Minnesota permit test — 5 rules, each with the reason behind it and a question on it while it is fresh.
The rules
Your view through the windshield and windows must not be blocked by cracks, discoloration, steam, frost, ice or snow.
Scraping one small patch clear leaves a driver looking through a letterbox at a whole road.
Your view through windshields and windows must be clear and not obstructed by cracks, discoloration, steam, frost, ice or snow when driving.
Do not hang objects between the driver and the windshield.
Something swinging from the mirror hides a pedestrian exactly when the car is turning toward them.
Do not hang objects between the driver and the windshield.
A navigation system may be mounted near the bottom of the windshield.
Down low it sits outside the view of the road. Stuck in the middle of the glass it becomes a blind spot.
Global positioning and other navigation systems can be mounted near the bottom part of the windshield.
Window tint applied after Aug. 1, 1985 must show the percentage of light it transmits and reflects.
An officer cannot judge tint by eye. The label is what makes it checkable at the roadside.
Any window tint applied to the side or rear windows after Aug. 1, 1985, must show the percentage of light transmitted and reflected.
Tint transmitting less than 50 percent of light is limited to the rear window of a pickup or the rear and side windows of a van, limousine or funeral vehicle.
Dark glass hides the driver from everyone who needs to see them, including a child at a crosswalk.
If it transmits less than 50 percent or reflects more than 20 percent of available light, you can only use it on the rear window of a pickup truck or the rear and side windows of a van, limousine or vehicle used by a funeral home.
On the test
What must a driver clear before setting off?
Anything blocking the view through the glass. Scraping one small patch clear leaves a driver looking through a letterbox at a whole road. Minnesota Driver’s Manual, p.24: “Your view through windshields and windows must be clear and not obstructed by cracks, discoloration, steam, frost, ice or snow when driving.”
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 Minnesota Driver’s Manual, published by the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, and against the state code itself. Last checked 2026-09-22.
- src/assets/drivers-manuals/MN.pdf (Minnesota Driver’s Manual, May 2025, Minnesota Department of Public Safety, Driver and Vehicle Services, retrieved 2026-09-14; sha256 pinned in SOURCES.json)
- src/assets/drivers-manuals/MN.pages.txt (the plain pdftotext fixture every citation here was cut from and verified against; sha256 pinned in SOURCES.json)
- src/assets/drivers-manuals/SOURCES.json, MN entry -- the folio offset of 3 and its basis, the folio marker, the extraction-flag score and the welded compounds it costs, and the record of where the exam shape comes from