17.1 Driving Position and Steering

17.1 Driving Position and Steering

Subject 10 of the Guyana Police Force (GPF) Learner/Driver Theoretical Programme is Principles of steering, cornering and control of a motor vehicle. This OpenExamPrep section is independent study of the April 2025 booklet's driving-position and steering lines, read with Guyana's keep-left rule in the Road Traffic Code and with the Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic Act, Cap. 51:02. It is not a Police lecture, not a reprint of the three-book package issued from Traffic Headquarters, Eve Leary, and not a claim of official approval or partnership.

Quick Answer: Set the seat so that with the control pedals fully depressed, the knee is slightly bent. Rest both hands in the ten-to-two grip. A well-designed safety belt helps you keep that position without thinking about it. Turn the wheel with push-and-pull. Never cross your hands. Never let the wheel spin through the hands. Take one hand off only on a straight, and only to signal or change gear.

Guyana drives on the left. Typical cars here are right-hand drive: you sit on the right, the near side is the left kerb, and overtaking (when lawful) is on the right. The booklet's grip and push-and-pull rules were written for that layout. Do not import a left-hand-drive habit of sitting on the left and treating the right shoulder as home.

Seat first: pedals fully down, knee slightly bent

Driving position in the programme is a seat setting, not a slogan. The driving seat should be so adjusted that with the control pedals fully depressed, the knee is slightly bent. That is the sentence to memorise.

Fully depressed means you can push the clutch, the foot brake, and the accelerator to the end of their travel. A learner who sits too far forward locks the knee on the last inch of the clutch and cannot feather it on a Kitty slope. A learner who sits too far back reaches for the pedals with a pointed toe, loses the brake in a Georgetown hold-up, and leans off the wheel just when both hands should be working.

Knee slightly bent is the Goldilocks joint: enough bend to keep moving the pedal, not so much bend that the thigh is jammed under the wheel. The booklet's reason is maximum control and greater confidence. Control here is physical reach. Confidence is the knowledge that an East Coast pothole or a sudden STOP line on the East Bank will not leave you stretching.

The same seat setting has a second job. For a driver of average build, the hands should then fall comfortably into the correct grip, evenly balanced on either side of the wheel. If you must hunch, twist, or lock the elbows to find the rim, the seat is wrong even if the pedals feel all right.

After the seat is set, the programme's good-habits pages tell you to adjust the mirrors so rear vision is available at a glance. Seat first, mirrors second. A ten-to-two grip is useless if you then crane around because the interior glass still shows the headrest.

Ten-to-two: the grip of maximum control

The evenly balanced grip is named: the ten-to-two position. Picture a clock on the wheel. One hand at about ten, the other at about two. The hands are opposite each other, not stacked at six o'clock, not both at twelve, and not crossed.

The programme calls ten-to-two the position of maximum control. In left-hand traffic that control has a direction: you can push the near-side (left) rim or the off-side (right) rim without first untangling your wrists. On a right-hand-drive car the wheel sits in front of your chest, slightly left of the right-hand door. Ten-to-two still means one hand each side, not a one-handed dangle out of the window while the other palm sits at the bottom of the wheel.

The safety belt holds the position you just set

A well-designed safety belt helps the driver to retain this position without conscious effort and is a wise safety precaution. That is the steering chapter's belt sentence. It is not a substitute for the later Act chapter on who must wear a front belt (Cap. 51:02 Part VIA). Here the exam point is mechanical: the belt keeps your hips on the seat so the bent-knee pedal reach and the ten-to-two hands survive a hard brake on Mandela Avenue or a washboard stretch toward Timehri.

Without the belt, braking throws the body forward. You then chase the wheel, the knee straightens, and the pedal you thought you owned is suddenly a stretch. The programme calls the belt a wise safety precaution for that reason, not as decoration.

Push-and-pull: how the wheel is allowed to turn

When changing direction, the wheel should be turned with push and pull movement. One hand pushes its side of the rim; the other pulls. The hands stay on their sides of the wheel. They do not climb over the twelve-o'clock point and swap places.

Never cross your hands over the wheel. Crossing looks quick in a car park. On a live Georgetown street it leaves a moment when neither hand has a useful push, and a pothole or a wet marking can snatch the rim through the crossed wrists.

Never permit the wheel to spin through the hand. Self-centring after a sharp turn is not a rest break. If you open the palms and let the rim whirl back, you have given up the maximum-control grip the booklet just defined. On wet or oily bitumen — the same surfaces the defensive-driving pages tell you to treat as hydroplane risk — a spinning wheel is a wheel you do not own.

Push-and-pull is slower than a Hollywood spin. That is the point. Speed of the hands is not the test. Retention of ten-to-two control is the test.

One hand off — only on a straight, and only for two jobs

The ten-to-two position is maximum control, but you sometimes must remove one hand for signalling, gear changing, and similar tasks. The programme's limit is strict: a good driver does that when on a straight course.

Read the limit in two parts.

1. Where: a straight. Not in the middle of a right-hand bend on the East Bank. Not on the Demerara Harbour Bridge or Canje Bridge decks. Not while you are still turning into a New Amsterdam side street. Finish the turn, both hands back, then — if the road is straight — you may take a hand off.

2. Why: signalling or gears (the booklet's examples). Hand signals in Guyana's regulations use the right arm. On a right-hand-drive car that often means the right hand leaves the wheel. Gear changing takes the hand that works the lever. Neither task is an excuse to drink, hold a phone, rummage in a pocket, or rest an elbow on the door along the Linden corridor. Hand-held phones are a separate offence under section 37A; this chapter's rule is about steering control, not a second phone essay.

If you need a gear for a slope or a signal for a turn, the sequence is: straighten, one hand off, complete the job, both hands back, then change direction with push-and-pull. Changing gear in the bend is how learners lose the rim.

Guyana scenes that test the grip

Georgetown hold-up. Clutch fully down, knee still bent, ten-to-two until you must signal. Do not sit with a locked knee and one palm at six o'clock while the line crawls on Church Street.

East Coast rain. Belt on so spray and a sudden brake do not slide you off the pedals. Push-and-pull only; a spinning wheel on a water film is the hydroplane chapter in a different sentence.

East Bank curve toward Grove. Both hands stay on. The straight before the curve is where speed and gears were finished (section 17.2). The curve itself is not a gear-change office.

Soesdyke–Linden Highway. A long straight is the lawful place for a gear change or a signal. A crest or a bend is not. Posted 80 km/h for a full licence is still irrelevant to a learner's 40 km/h cap (section 17.3), and neither figure authorises one-handed steering.

Bartica or a hilly interior stretch. The seat must still let you floor the clutch. If a borrowed car's seat will not go forward enough, you do not have the programme's driving position — fix the seat before you roll.

Exam traps for 17.1

• Sitting so far back that the arms are straight and the knees lock — that is not "slightly bent."
• Calling twelve o'clock, crossed hands, or a bottom-of-wheel spin the named grip. The named grip is ten-to-two.
• Treating the belt as optional for "short hops" in Georgetown. The steering pages call it the device that retains the position.
• Crossing the hands "just this once" on a tight Kitty turn, or letting the wheel spin back after the turn.
• Taking a hand off in the bend to change gear because "I always do that." The booklet's good driver does it on a straight course.

The live sitting is electronic multiple-choice at an approved GPF centre; the qualifying mark is 65 percent. Exact item counts and minutes are not published. Lock the seat sentence, the named grip, the belt's holding job, push-and-pull with the two nevers, and the straight-only one-hand rule. Section 17.2 then puts that grip on left and right bends.