14.3 Hills and Leaving the Vehicle

Hills and leaving the vehicle

Rule 91 is the last paragraph under the Code heading Parking and Stopping. The April 2025 PDF states: you must stop the engine and engage the hand brake before you leave the vehicle. It is also advisable on a slope or incline to engage a gear, but remember to disengage it before starting the engine. That is the hill-parking wording the GPF package actually prints. This OpenExamPrep section is independent study of rule 91, of rule 90(a) (close to the edge), of rule 71 (doors), of the Theoretical Programme’s handbrake and mirror lines, and of the Code’s night-parking lamp exception for Georgetown and New Amsterdam. It is not a Police booklet and it does not claim official approval.

Quick Answer: Before you leave the vehicle: engine off, hand brake on. On a slope or incline, also engage a gear, then disengage that gear before you start the engine again. Rule 90(a): do not let the vehicle stand in the roadway unless it is drawn in close to the edge of the road — wheels at the edge, not a lane-width out. The Code does not tell you to turn the steering uphill or downhill the way some foreign tests do. Rule 71: look before you open a door. The programme: glance in the mirrors before getting out.

What rule 91 actually requires

Three duties, in the order the Code cares about:

1. Stop the engine. An unattended running engine can move the vehicle if a gear is knocked in, if a child reaches a control, or if a failing hand brake begins to slip. Rule 91 is not optional on “quiet” Georgetown side streets.
2. Engage the hand brake before you leave. The Theoretical Programme notes that the handbrake is often called the parking brake, but it is also how you hold the vehicle stationary whenever necessary, including temporary stops at lights and pedestrian crossings, independently of the foot pedal. When you leave, the handbrake is not a courtesy; it is the Code’s named control.
3. On a slope or incline, it is advisable to engage a gear. The printed verb is advisable, not “ignore on a slight grade.” A wet East Bank slope, a cambered village street, or a driveway that falls toward the road is still a slope. The extra restraint is the gearbox holding the driveline after the engine is stopped.

Then the warning the paper will invert: remember to disengage it before starting the engine. If you left first gear or reverse selected to hold the vehicle on the hill, you must take that gear out (return the lever to the position the starting drill requires — the programme’s learner start begins with neutral and the handbrake on) before you crank the starter. Starting in the parking gear can make the vehicle lurch toward the road, the drain, or the vehicle behind you.

The programme’s moving-off order, taught in more detail in the good-habits chapter, matches this: be in gear before you release the handbrake when you intend to move; when stopping, apply the handbrake before putting the lever to neutral. Leaving the vehicle is the opposite end of that drill: handbrake holding, engine dead, extra gear on a slope, then that extra gear removed before the next start.

The Code’s kerb wording: close to the edge, not a US wheel-turn

Some foreign handbooks (United States state tests, and some later United Kingdom editions) tell you, on a hill, to turn the front wheels toward the kerb or away from the kerb according to whether you are facing uphill or downhill, so that a runaway vehicle rides into the kerb rather than into the stream. The Guyana Road Traffic Code does not print that uphill/downhill steering drill in rule 91 or in the Parking and Stopping cluster.

What the Code does print about the kerb and the wheels is rule 90(a): do not let the vehicle stand in the roadway unless it is drawn in close to the edge of the road. The parking position is wheels close to the edge — the kerb, drain lip, or parapet line — not sitting a full lane out, and not “angled into traffic so people can see you.” On a slope that close-to-the-edge position is still the instruction. Combine it with rule 91: engine off, handbrake on, gear selected on the incline.

Do not answer a GPF item by reciting “uphill turn away, downhill turn toward” as if it were Guyana Code. If the options quote rule 91’s engine, hand brake, and gear, that is the hill answer. If the options quote drawn in close to the edge, that is the kerb answer. Importing a foreign wheel-turn can make you pick the distractor that sounds professional and is still not the printed Guyana rule.

Rule 90’s other limbs still apply on hills: 30 feet from a junction, 15 feet from a hydrant, no hazard at a brow where rule 34 already treats the top of a hill or rising of the roadway as an overtaking danger because sight lines are short. Leaving a vehicle standing on a crest so that an emerging driver cannot see is the hazard in 90(c) as well as bad hill practice.

Getting out: doors, mirrors, children

Rule 71: before opening any of the doors of your motor vehicle, make sure that it is safe to do so, either by looking around or by glancing in your mirror. The left-hand (near-side) doors open toward the kerb when you parked correctly on the left; they still can strike a cyclist, a pedestrian on the parapet, or a minibus mirror. The off-side doors open toward moving traffic. In left-hand traffic that is the dangerous door on a two-way road. Open it only when the off-side stream is clear.

The Theoretical Programme’s USE OF MIRRORS paragraph adds the habit: glance into your mirror when starting off, and look around before any alteration in course or speed and before getting out of the car. Rule 69 and 70 already warn about children and obstructions in the blind area near the front wheels when you move off and near the back wheels when you reverse. Those blind areas still exist when you step out. A child who was not in the mirror from the seat can be at the bumper once the door swings.

Do not leave a door open into the carriageway while you “just run in.” That is occupying the road with a door as well as with the vehicle. Do not walk around the off side into the keep-left stream without looking; the next vehicle is keeping left, toward the edge you just parked on.

Night: parked vehicles and lights in Georgetown and New Amsterdam

The Code’s lighting cluster sits just before Parking and Stopping. Every motor vehicle seven feet or less in width on a road during the hours of darkness must carry two front white lamps and a rear red lamp (wider vehicles have extra rear and reflector duties). Then the parking exception:

No lights are required on motor vehicles parked as near as possible to the side of the road in Georgetown or New Amsterdam provided the front and rear vehicles are within fifteen yards of a street lamp, or on vehicles other than the front and rear vehicles when three or more vehicles are drawn up in a single line at the side of any road with an interval of not more than six feet between successive vehicles.

Teach that exception tightly:

• It applies to vehicles parked as near as possible to the side — the same idea as rule 90(a).
• Fifteen yards to a street lamp is not the 15-foot hydrant rule and not the 30-foot junction rule.
• In a line of three or more, the front and rear vehicles still need the lamp relationship the paragraph describes; the middle vehicles in a tight (≤ six feet) single line are the ones relieved as “other than the front and rear.”
• Outside Georgetown and New Amsterdam, or away from that lamp distance, do not assume a parked car may sit dark on the edge.

Hours of darkness themselves are tabulated later in the Code (February to September, October to January). Leaving the vehicle at night is still leaving the vehicle: engine off, handbrake on, gear on a slope.

Leave-vehicle checklist (Code and programme)

A vehicle that rolls from a slope because the driver selected neutral, skipped the handbrake, and left the engine running is the opposite of rules 90 and 91. A vehicle parked a lane out from the edge “for visibility” has already broken 90(a). A driver who recites a United States uphill/downhill steering rhyme but cannot quote stop the engine, engage the hand brake, engage a gear on a slope, disengage before starting has studied the wrong booklet for this sitting.

Independent OpenExamPrep teaching of hills and leaving the vehicle follows the printed Guyana Road Traffic Code. It does not add a kerb-turn that the Code omitted, and it does not replace the GPF three-book package.