Road Signs, Signals and Road Markings
What this domain tests
This domain checks whether you can read a sign or a painted line at a glance and act on it correctly. Jamaican signs follow international shapes and colours: speeds are shown in km/h and distances in metres. Sign shapes tell you the type of message before you can read the words.
Sign families
- Circles give orders. A red ring means a prohibition (no entry, no overtaking, a maximum speed). A blue circle means a mandatory direction or action.
- Triangles with a red border warn of something ahead: a bend, a junction, a hump, a pedestrian crossing, school children.
- Rectangles inform: direction signs, parking, hospitals, route numbers.
- Stop is the only octagon. Stop completely at the line, even when the road looks empty.
- Give Way is the inverted triangle. Slow down, be ready to stop, and go only when clear.
Markings
- A broken white centre line means you may overtake when it is safe. A continuous white line means do not cross or straddle it.
- Where there are two lines and only one is broken, overtake only if the broken line is on your side.
- A yellow box junction must not be entered unless your exit is clear; the exception is when you are waiting to turn right.
- Stop lines appear at traffic lights and junctions; broad white stripes mark a pedestrian crossing.
- Yellow lines along the edge restrict parking. They do not make the road one-way.
Worked example
You approach a T-junction controlled by a Give Way sign, with broken white lines across the mouth of your road. A car is coming along the main road from your right. You slow, stop if necessary and wait. The sign and the markings both require you to yield to traffic already on the main road; you do not creep forward to claim a gap.
Traps that cost marks
- Rolling through a Stop sign instead of stopping with the wheels still.
- Treating Give Way as a full stop, or a Stop sign as Give Way.
- Reading a red-ringed 50 as a minimum speed rather than a maximum.
- Ignoring the road marking because a sign nearby seems to say something else.