Vehicle breakdown — New Hampshire Permit Test
Vehicle breakdown on the New Hampshire permit test — 4 rules, each with the reason behind it and a question on it while it is fresh.
The rules
When a vehicle breaks down a driver should turn on the emergency flashers to show the vehicle is disabled.
The flashers are the only way to say to an approaching driver that this car is stopped and not just slow.
Turn on the emergency flashers to show the vehicle is disabled.
A driver should place emergency flares or reflectors 200 feet in front of and behind a disabled vehicle if available.
Two hundred feet is roughly the warning a driver needs at speed to change lanes rather than brake.
by placing emergency flares or reflectors 200 feet in front of and behind the vehicle.
If no phone is available a driver should raise the hood and tie a white cloth, or a red one in a snowstorm, to the door handle or antenna.
White disappears against snow, which is why the color of the cloth changes with the weather.
raise the hood of the vehicle and tie a white cloth (red in a snowstorm) to the driver’s door handle or the vehicle’s antenna
A driver should stay with a disabled vehicle until help arrives if possible, but should get all passengers out and well away from traffic if the vehicle is in a hazardous location.
The car is easier to see than a person, until the car is somewhere it is about to be hit.
If the vehicle is in a hazardous location, get all passengers out of the vehicle and well away from traffic.
On the test
What should a driver do first when a vehicle breaks down?
Turn on the emergency flashers. The flashers are the only way to say to an approaching driver that this car is stopped and not just slow. New Hampshire Driver's Manual, p.35: “Turn on the emergency flashers to show the vehicle is disabled.”
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
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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)