Steering — New Hampshire Permit Test
Steering on the New Hampshire permit test — 3 rules, each with the reason behind it and a question on it while it is fresh.
The rules
A driver’s hands should be in the 9 o’clock and 3 o’clock, or the 8 o’clock and 4 o’clock positions.
Hands lower on the wheel keep the arms out of the way of the airbag, which comes out of the middle of it.
Drivers’ hands should be in the 9 o’clock and 3 o’clock, or the 8 o’clock and 4 o’clock positions.
Knuckles and thumbs should stay on the outside of the steering wheel.
A thumb hooked inside the rim is broken when the wheel is snatched round by a pothole or a blowout.
Knuckles and thumbs should stay on the outside of the wheel.
Drivers may use hand-to-hand steering for slight steering, and hand-over-hand for greater steering inputs.
Small corrections do not need the hands to leave their places, and saving that movement keeps the wheel under control.
Drivers may use hand-to-hand steering for slight steering, and hand-over-hand for greater steering inputs.
On the test
Where should a driver’s hands be on the steering wheel?
At 9 o’clock and 3 o’clock, or 8 and 4. Hands lower on the wheel keep the arms out of the way of the airbag, which comes out of the middle of it. New Hampshire Driver's Manual, p.14: “Drivers’ hands should be in the 9 o’clock and 3 o’clock, or the 8 o’clock and 4 o’clock positions.”
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 New Hampshire permit topics
Where these come from
Every rule here is checked against New Hampshire Driver's Manual, published by the New Hampshire Division of Motor Vehicles, and against the state code itself. Last checked 2026-09-16.
- src/assets/drivers-manuals/NH.pdf (New Hampshire Driver's Manual, Rev. 11/25, New Hampshire Division of Motor Vehicles, retrieved 2026-09-14)
- src/assets/drivers-manuals/NH.pages.txt (plain pdftotext over that PDF; sha256 pinned in SOURCES.json)
- src/assets/drivers-manuals/SOURCES.json (sha256, folio offset 6, folioMarker, nonLawPages, signGalleryPages and the extraction flag, each with its basis)