The bonnet latch fails and the hood springs open, completely blocking your view through the windscreen while you are moving in traffic. What should you do?

Why C is correct

An open bonnet is a visibility emergency, not a mechanical one: the car still steers and brakes normally, and the task is to stop safely without a forward view. The technique is to use whatever view exists — the strip beneath the bonnet's lower edge, or the side window — while slowing progressively and moving to the shoulder with your signal on. Every other response treats a control problem as if it were a vision problem you can out-guess. Traffic behind needs your deceleration to be smooth and predictable; the road needs you off it, and both needs are met by one calm sequence.

Why the other options are wrong

A. Stick your head out of the window and steer looking down at the lane line

Leaning out the window to sight a lane line puts your head where mirrors, posts and passing traffic live, and it makes steering a guessing game conducted with your cheekbone leading the car. The gap under the bonnet is designed to be used from the driving position.

B. Brake hard where you are and crawl forward using the gap under the bonnet

A hard brake with no forward vision and traffic behind you is the fastest route to a rear-end collision layered on top of the equipment failure. Slowing smoothly gives following drivers the same information a normal stop would.

D. Accelerate to close the bonnet against the wind pressure

More speed lifts a light bonnet higher, not shut, and it expands the blind zone at the worst possible moment. The latch failure does not respond to aerodynamics; the sequence that works is slow, signal, and leave the road.

On the road

A worn secondary latch lets go on a city arterial and the bonnet stands bolt upright. The driver's boot eases off, hazards on, and she steers by the sliver of road under the hood's bottom edge into the right-turn lane, rolling to a stop at the kerb. Thirty seconds, one honk from behind, and a broken cable — the version of this story that ends at a garage rather than in a crunch.

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