Safety and your vehicle theory test questions

82 questions in this topic

Tyres, lights, brakes, steering, fluid levels, and the warning lights that tell you something has gone wrong. It also covers seatbelts, child seats, and how to load a car without making it handle badly.

There is an environmental thread as well: how the way you drive affects fuel use and emissions, and what you should do about it.

Practise safety and your vehicle

Questions come from the DVSA revision question bank, used under licence. You will not see whether an answer is right until you have committed to one, which is the point. A sample of every topic is free and needs no account.

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The car is your responsibility, not the garage's

An MOT checks that a car met the standard on one day of the year. For the other three hundred and sixty four, keeping it roadworthy is down to whoever drives it. This topic covers the basic checks every driver should be able to do, and the signs that something is about to go wrong.

Tyres first

Tyres are the only part of the car that touches the road, and they are easy to neglect. For a car, the law wants at least 1.6mm of tread across the middle three quarters, measured right round the whole tyre, and each tyre that falls short can put three points on your licence. Pressures matter as much as tread. Check them before a drive rather than after one, using the figures in the handbook or on the sticker inside the door frame, and look for cuts or bulges in the sidewalls while you are down there.

Lights, fluids and warning lights

A walk round the car with the lights on takes less than a minute and catches the most common faults. Under the bonnet, oil, coolant, screenwash and brake fluid all have marked levels, and the handbook shows where each one lives.

Dashboard warning lights are worth learning properly. As a rough guide, red means get off the road at the first safe chance and work out what is wrong, while amber means something needs attention soon. A red oil pressure or brake warning is not one to drive home on.

Seatbelts and child seats

Seatbelts must be worn by everyone, front and back, unless they are exempt. Children normally need a child seat until they are twelve years old or 135cm tall, whichever comes first, and a baby seat that faces backwards must never sit in front of a passenger airbag that is switched on.

Driving more economically

The way you drive affects how much fuel you burn and what comes out of the exhaust. Smooth acceleration, reading the road so you brake less, taking off an empty roof box and keeping the tyres properly inflated all help. None of it is complicated, and most of it also makes the drive less stressful.

In the test

A lot of these questions are factual. Know the tread depth, the meaning of the main warning lights and the rules on seatbelts, and you will pick up easy marks.

How this topic appears in the real test

The car theory test is 50 multiple choice questions in 57 minutes, and you need 43 correct to pass. The questions are drawn from every topic, so you cannot skip one and hope. There is a hazard perception part as well, and you have to pass both on the same day.

These are revision questions rather than the questions you will be asked on the day.