Road traffic law for Category C/E combinations
The Danish theory test for CE does not test driving skill, it tests whether you know the legal frame around a lorry-and-trailer combination: the Road Traffic Act (færdselsloven) and the executive orders under it. Expect questions where the answer depends only on the vehicle's permitted total mass, its combination mass, or where you are driving.
Speed limits and the mass trigger
- General Danish limits: 50 km/h in built-up areas, 80 km/h outside built-up areas, 130 km/h on motorways (several stretches are signed 110).
- A lorry with a permitted total mass over 3,500 kg, and any combination it draws, is limited to 80 km/h - also on the motorway. A posted lower limit always overrides.
- The phrase in the law is "tilladt totalvægt" (permitted total mass), not the actual weight on the day. An empty 26-tonner still falls under the heavy rules.
Priority and manoeuvring
- Denmark applies right-hand priority where nothing else is signed. Leaving a property, petrol station or car park, you yield to everyone.
- Turning right across a cycle lane, or left across oncoming traffic, always gives way.
- Overtaking restrictions on heavy combinations come from: signed bans, pedestrian crossings, blind crests, and lane restrictions reserving the left lane for lighter vehicles.
- Keep to the right-hand lane; the centre and left lanes are for overtaking only where permitted.
Licence, papers and duties
- CE covers a lorry over 3,500 kg with a trailer over 750 kg; the normal minimum age is 21, with vocational lorry-driver training allowing an earlier start. Driver CPC (35 hours per five years) and a community licence travel with you.
- After any accident: stop, secure the scene, help the injured, give your details. Personal injury must be reported to the police; the non-emergency number is 114, emergency is 112. Leaving the scene is a separate, serious offence.
Worked example - which limit applies? You drive an 18-tonne lorry with a 22-tonne drawbar trailer. The road is a rural road with no sign. Reason it through: the lorry's permitted total mass exceeds 3,500 kg, so the heavy-vehicle limit of 80 km/h applies, which happens to equal the general rural limit. A sign showing 70 would bind you to 70. Entering a built-up area, the limit drops to 50 unless a sign says otherwise.
Traps that cost marks
- Assuming the motorway's 130 km/h applies because you are driving a modern, stable combination. It never does.
- Confusing permitted total mass with actual mass, and so applying car rules when empty.
- Forgetting that a local speed sign applies to you even when it is lower than the general heavy-vehicle limit.
- Treating the right-hand priority rule as universal - signed junctions and exits from properties override it.