Driver's License Test Prep
Texas Practice Emergencies

You have no white cloth to tie to your broken-down car. What does the manual tell you to do instead?

  1. A.
    Prop the driver's door open
  2. B.
    Turn on the interior dome light
  3. C.
    Open the trunk lid wide
  4. D.
    Raise the car's hood Correct
The Why

The answer is "Raise the car's hood"

The Texas manual lists raising the hood as the direct fallback when you don't have a white cloth. The dome-light answer traps readers who blur two nearby lines in the breakdown passage: the interior lights that go on at night on top of taillights and warning lights, and the separate step for when no white cloth is available.

Why the others miss

The traps in the wrong answers

A. Prop the driver's door open

The manual lists the raised hood as the fallback; a propped driver's door reaches into the traffic lane and adds a hazard the raised hood avoids. This answer reaches for the door after seeing 'door handle' named in the white-cloth instruction and reads that phrase as the door itself.

B. Turn on the interior dome light

Turning on the interior lights is the extra nighttime step, layered on top of taillights and warning lights; the substitute for a missing white cloth is still to raise the hood. This answer reads the interior-lights sentence, which sits one line above the white-cloth sentence, as the answer to the wrong question.

C. Open the trunk lid wide

The Texas manual names raising the hood (not opening the trunk) as the substitute for a white cloth, and an open trunk lid isn't a signal drivers are trained to look for. This answer substitutes the trunk lid for the hood because both are large body panels the driver could raise as a visible flag.

The Rule

This question tests your knowledge of Emergencies in Texas. Source: Texas Driver Manual, "Vehicle Breakdown," p.48..

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