Seat belts and air bags — Virginia Permit Test
Seat belts and air bags on the Virginia permit test — 7 rules, each with the reason behind it and a question on it while it is fresh.
The rules
Under Virginia law the driver and all passengers, in the front and the back, must wear safety belts.
An unbelted passenger in the back is thrown forward in a crash and can kill the person sitting in front of them.
A driver carrying anyone younger than 18 must make sure that passenger is properly secured, wherever in the vehicle they are sitting.
The duty falls on the driver because a young passenger cannot be relied on to buckle up and the driver is the one who gets the ticket.
Wear the lap belt low on your lap against your thighs, and the shoulder belt over your shoulder and across your chest. Never wear the shoulder belt behind your back or under your arm.
The belt has to load onto bone rather than soft tissue, and a belt under the arm puts the whole crash into your ribs.
Wearing a safety belt can double your chances of surviving a crash and more than double your chances of avoiding serious injury.
The belt keeps you in the seat, and staying in the seat is what lets the rest of the car do its job around you.
If your vehicle has air bags, move your seat back so that you are at least ten inches from the steering wheel.
An air bag comes out faster than you can blink, and sitting close to it means being hit by it before it has fully opened.
Children aged 12 and under are safer buckled up in the back seat.
The back seat is furthest from the front of the car, which is where most of the force in a crash arrives.
A licensed physician may grant a waiver of the seat belt requirement. The person with the waiver must carry the physician’s signed written statement.
The paper is the whole of the exemption, so a waiver left at home is the same as no waiver at all.
On the test
Who must wear a safety belt under Virginia law?
The driver and all of the passengers. An unbelted passenger in the back is thrown forward in a crash and can kill the person sitting in front of them.
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.
Where these come from
Every rule here is checked against Virginia Driver’s Manual, published by the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, and against the state code itself. Last checked 2026-09-02.
- https://www.dmv.virginia.gov/licenses-ids/exams/know-exam
- https://www.dmv.virginia.gov/sites/default/files/forms/dmv39.pdf
- https://www.dmv.virginia.gov/sites/default/files/documents/dmv39i.pdf
- https://www.dmv.virginia.gov/licenses-ids/learners/apply
- https://www.dmv.virginia.gov/licenses-ids/learners/restrictions
- https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title46.2/section46.2-870/
- https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title46.2/section46.2-873/
- https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title46.2/section46.2-874/
- https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title46.2/section46.2-862/