Right-of-way, intersections and roundabouts
This domain asks one question in many disguises: who moves first? The Danish default is the right-hand rule, but signs, lights, road type and the direction of your turn all modify it - and exam questions are built on exactly those modifications.
The right-hand rule
Where nothing else decides priority, you give way to traffic approaching from your right. This applies at ordinary unsignalised junctions. It stops applying the moment a sign, a light or a marked exit changes the picture.
Situations where you must always yield
- Leaving a private road, drive, car park, petrol station, yard or field: you yield to everyone.
- Turning left: yield to oncoming traffic going straight on or turning right.
- Turning across a cycle path or footway: yield to cyclists and pedestrians continuing straight.
- Reversing, or leaving a parking space.
- Emergency vehicles using blue lights and sirens.
Roundabouts
Priority goes to traffic already circulating: you give way at the entry line and join when there is a gap. Signal right as you pass the exit before yours and leave from the outer lane; signal left only when changing lane inside a multi-lane roundabout. Never cross the central island, even a painted one. Watch for cyclists, who often use a separate path around the roundabout and reappear at your exit - check your exit before you take it.
Buses
In built-up areas a bus signalling out from a stop has priority; ease off and let it go. Outside built-up areas it does not.
Worked example
You are at a four-way junction with no signs and no lights. A car approaches from your left and a van from your right. The van is on your right, so it goes first; the car on your left must wait for you. If a give-way line had been painted across your lane, the whole answer flips: you would wait for both. Read the surface markings, not just the geometry.
Traps that cost marks
- Yielding when you have priority, which confuses the traffic behind you.
- Forgetting the cyclist on the cycle path when turning in or out of a side road.
- Cutting across a roundabout lane, or entering without deciding which exit you need.
- Assuming a bus must always be let out - only in built-up areas.
- Treating the right-hand rule as absolute where a give-way sign or priority road applies.