On a steep narrow mountain road with no room for two vehicles, an uphill driver meets a downhill driver. Which one has the right of way?

Why B is correct

The rule favours the driver heading uphill, and the reasoning is entirely about who can recover afterwards. Restarting from a standstill on a steep grade means managing clutch, handbrake and throttle together while gravity works against you, and getting it wrong either stalls the car or rolls it backwards. Backing downhill is awkward but the engine and brakes work with the driver rather than against them. Treat it as courtesy as much as rule: if you are the downhill driver and the one above waves you past, decline, because the reverse of this rarely ends tidily.

Why the other options are wrong

A. Neither — both must abandon their vehicles and proceed on foot

Abandoning both vehicles solves nothing that one of them reversing cannot. One can always back to a passing place, and the rule only decides which one it is.

C. The downhill driver, because gravity makes backing down safer

Gravity down the slope is precisely the hazard. Reversing downhill asks less of the drivetrain than restarting uphill does, which is why the duty falls on the driver already travelling down.

D. Whoever is carrying more passengers

Passenger count has never had any bearing on right of way. Allocation here follows what each vehicle can physically manage from a stop on a grade.

On the road

Two cars meet on a narrow approach with rock on one side and nothing on the other. The downhill driver backs eighty metres to a passing place. The alternative was a stalled car rolling backwards into something nobody wanted. The rule allocates an inconvenience rather than a privilege, and putting it on the driver already heading downhill was never arbitrary.

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