Speed limits, stopping and parking rules
Speed is the most common cause of serious crashes, and the examiner expects you to know the default limits, to read the signs that change them, and to tell a brief stop from parking. Comoros applies the usual European-style hierarchy - a built-up area limit, a rural limit and, where they exist, higher limits on divided roads - always subject to the posted value.
Default limits and adapting
- Built-up areas: generally 50 km/h, starting at the place-name sign at the entrance to the town or village.
- Open road: around 90 km/h, lower where signed. Rain, gravel, livestock or poor visibility mean slowing well below the limit.
- Passing a school, market or a bus that has stopped with children: drop below the limit and cover the brake.
- The limit is a maximum, not a target. You must always be able to stop within the distance you can see to be clear.
Stopping versus parking
Stopping is brief, with the driver able to move off immediately; parking is longer, with the driver leaving the vehicle. Both are forbidden where they endanger or block: on pedestrian crossings and their approaches, on or near junctions, on bends, crests and narrow sections, at bus stops, in front of fire hydrants, and wherever the vehicle would force others to cross a continuous line. On a two-way road, park in the direction of traffic, on the right. At night on an unlit road, leave side lights on or use a reflective marker.
Worked example
You enter a village past the place-name sign and the road narrows beside a market. There is no 30 sign. The limit is now 50 km/h, but the market makes 30 km/h and a foot hovering near the brake the sensible speed: the legal maximum does not protect you from a pedestrian stepping out.
Traps that cost marks
Believing hazard lights make illegal parking legal; stopping just one minute on a crossing; parking against the flow of traffic at night without lights; treating the limit as the speed you should drive.