Children and air bags — Montana Permit Test
Children and air bags on the Montana permit test — 4 rules, each with the reason behind it and a question on it while it is fresh.
The rules
Never place a rear-facing car seat in the front passenger seat with an active air bag.
An air bag opens with enough force to slam a rear-facing seat into the dashboard.
Never place a rear-facing car seat in the front passenger seat with an active air bag.
If a child must ride in the front seat of an airbag-equipped car, move the vehicle's seat back as far as possible from the air bag.
The closer a child sits to the dash, the harder the air bag hits them.
The vehicle's seat should be moved back as far as possible from the active airbag.
Whenever possible, children under age 13 should ride in the back seat.
Front-seat air bags are built for adults and can badly hurt a smaller child.
Whenever possible, children under age 13 should be secured in the backseat.
Do not hold a child in your arms while riding; in a crash you could crush the child.
In a 30 mph crash a 100-pound adult hits the child with about 3,000 pounds of force.
If you hold your child while riding in a vehicle, you could crush the child during a crash.
On the test
Where must a rear-facing car seat never be placed?
In the front seat with a live air bag. An air bag opens with enough force to slam a rear-facing seat into the dashboard. Montana Driver Manual, p.20: “Never place a rear-facing car seat in the front passenger seat with an active air bag.”
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 Montana Driver Manual, published by the Montana Department of Justice, and against the state code itself. Last checked 2026-10-04.
- src/assets/drivers-manuals/MT.pdf (Montana Driver Manual, Revised April 2024, Montana Department of Justice, Motor Vehicle Division, retrieved 2026-09-14 and re-checked 2026-10-04; sha256 pinned in SOURCES.json)
- src/assets/drivers-manuals/MT.pages.txt (scripts/mt-text.sh: pdftotext -layout except printed pp.24-26, which are plain; the fixture every citation here was cut from and verified against; sha256 pinned in SOURCES.json)
- src/assets/drivers-manuals/MT-exam.html (Administrative Rules of Montana 23.3.121, Road Signs and Road Rules, as reproduced by the Legal Information Institute, read 2026-10-04; states the seven-miss pass mark; sha256 pinned under examSource)
- https://mvdmt.gov/forms-driver-license/ (read 2026-10-04; links the manual)