Passing on two way roads — North Dakota Permit Test
Passing on two way roads on the North Dakota permit test — 5 rules, each with the reason behind it and a question on it while it is fresh.
The rules
Whenever there is a hill or a curve ahead, you must treat it as if there is oncoming traffic just beyond it.
You cannot see a car coming over a hill until it is close, so you have to assume one is there.
Whenever there is a hill or a curve ahead, you must treat it as if there is oncoming traffic just beyond it.
When passing, give yourself enough time to get completely beyond the vehicle you are passing and return to your lane at least 200 feet before meeting an approaching vehicle.
Closing speeds on a two-lane road are huge, and a margin that looks big shrinks to nothing in a second or two.
Give yourself enough time to get completely beyond the vehicle that you are passing, and return to your proper lane at least 200 feet before meeting an approaching vehicle.
Do not return to your lane until you can see the entire front of the vehicle you passed in your inside rear-view mirror.
Cutting back in too soon clips the car you just passed or forces its driver to brake hard.
Do not return to your lane until you can see the image of the entire front of the vehicle you passed within the inside rear-view mirror.
When passing, never leave the main-traveled roadway.
A shoulder can be soft, narrow or full of debris, and a car passing on it can lose control at speed.
When passing, never leave the main-traveled roadway.
When you are being passed, do not speed up.
Speeding up traps the passing driver in the oncoming lane, which is how many head-on crashes happen.
When being passed, do not speed up.
On the test
When judging a pass with a hill or curve ahead, what must you assume?
That oncoming traffic is just beyond it. You cannot see a car coming over a hill until it is close, so you have to assume one is there. North Dakota Noncommercial Driver License Manual, p.21: “Whenever there is a hill or a curve ahead, you must treat it as if there is oncoming traffic just beyond it.”
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.
All North Dakota permit topics
Where these come from
Every rule here is checked against North Dakota Noncommercial Driver License Manual, published by the North Dakota Department of Transportation, and against the state code itself. Last checked 2026-10-04.
- src/assets/drivers-manuals/ND.pdf (North Dakota Noncommercial Driver License Manual, 2025-2027, Revised 2025, North Dakota Department of Transportation, retrieved 2026-09-14 and re-checked 2026-10-04; sha256 pinned in SOURCES.json)
- src/assets/drivers-manuals/ND.pages.txt (the plain pdftotext fixture every citation here was cut from and verified against; sha256 pinned in SOURCES.json)
- https://www.dot.nd.gov/driver/noncommercial-driver-license-manual (read 2026-10-04; links the manual)
- https://www.dot.nd.gov/driver/driver-license (read 2026-10-04; states no count or mark for the Class D knowledge test)
- https://ndlegis.gov/information/acdata/pdf/37-03-01.pdf (N.D. Admin. Code chapter 37-03-01 and the rest of article 37-03, read 2026-10-04; states no knowledge-test figure)
- https://ndlegis.gov/cencode/t39c06.pdf (NDCC chapter 39-06, read 2026-10-04; section 39-06-13 sets what the examination covers and states no figure)