The Road User Handbook: the NSW DKT handbook

Download it

The handbook also comes in Arabic, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Farsi, Korean, Spanish, Thai and Vietnamese. You can buy a printed copy at a Service NSW centre.

What's in it

• Licences: the steps from Ls to a full licence, licence classes and the rules on each stage
• Safe driving: speed limits, alcohol and drugs, seatbelts, child car seats, phones and fatigue
• Sharing the road with pedestrians, bike and motorcycle riders, horse riders, trucks and buses
• Stopping, giving way and turning, including roundabouts, intersections and U-turns
• Overtaking, merging, motorways, lanes, lines and road markings
• Parking, warning signs, roadworks, crashes, breakdowns, and lights and horns

Where to spend your time

Start with the licence rules near the front. The 90 km/h learner limit, zero alcohol and the total ban on phones for L and P drivers are easy marks once you know them.

Then give the giving way chapter real attention. It covers Stop and Give way signs, intersections without signs, T-intersections and roundabouts, and the rules have exceptions you can't guess. The parking distances, like 10 m from an intersection without lights and 20 m from one with lights, are worth a second read too.

Pair it with practice

If you're doing the DKT online, the course itself includes quizzes and practice tests, so you can read as you go. For the in-person test, Service NSW points you to the free practice test online or in the NSW Practice Tests app, plus the question list above. Read a chapter, test yourself, then go back to whatever you missed.

The other NSW handbooks

There's a separate handbook for each later step: the Hazard Perception Handbook for the HPT, A Guide to the Driving Test for your Ps, and the Motorcycle Rider Handbook and Heavy Vehicle Driver Handbook for other licences.