Headlights — West Virginia Permit Test
Headlights on the West Virginia permit test — 8 rules, each with the reason behind it and a question on it while it is fresh.
The rules
Turn on your headlights from sunset to sunrise, in fog, smoke or rain, and at any other time when people and vehicles cannot be seen clearly at 500 feet.
The lights are as much about being seen as about seeing.
Dim your headlights within 500 feet of an approaching vehicle.
High beams fill the other driver's windshield and take their night vision away.
Dim your headlights within 200 feet of the vehicle in front of you.
High beams fill their mirror with light and blind them from behind.
Use low beam lights in fog, because high beams cause the light to be reflected back into your eyes.
Fog throws your own light straight back at you, so you see less by using more.
Avoid looking directly into the lights of oncoming vehicles by looking toward the right edge of the road, and slow down when facing their glare.
A driver blinded by oncoming lights cannot see the edge of the road either.
Make sure you can stop within the area lit by your headlights. Driving too fast to do that is called over driving your headlights.
Beyond your lights you are driving at whatever appears, with no time to answer it.
The fatal crash rate for night driving is three times greater than for day driving, even though fewer miles are driven at night.
Less light means less warning, and everything else follows from that.
Use your parking lights only when you are parked.
Parking lights are not enough to be seen by at speed, and a driver using them looks further away than they are.
On the test
At what distance of poor visibility must you turn on headlights?
When you cannot see clearly at 500 feet. The lights are as much about being seen as about seeing.
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.
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Where these come from
Every rule here is checked against West Virginia Driver's Licensing Handbook, published by the West Virginia Department of Transportation, and against the state code itself. Last checked 2026-09-06.