Green Light, Raised Hand: Sorting Conflicting Instructions at a Wet Junction
At 22:40 you are in the middle lane of a three-lane urban arterial in Riyadh, approaching a signalised junction at about 50 km/h. The rain has just stopped but the asphalt is still wet and glare from the street lights smears across it. Your signal head shows a steady green. In the middle of the junction a traffic officer in a reflective vest stands facing your direction with his right arm raised, palm towards you. To your left, a construction diversion has been painted in orange, cutting across a faded white solid edge line that still runs along the old lane boundary. A temporary arrow board marked 'keep left' is standing at roughly 45 degrees to the road after being clipped by a vehicle. The car behind you has been sitting about 8 metres off your bumper since the previous junction.
1. The signal is green but the officer's palm is towards you. What do you do in the next five seconds, and in what order of priority?
Read the worked answer
Order of control, highest first: police officer's signal → traffic light → sign → road marking. The officer's raised palm outranks the green light, so the green no longer authorises you to enter the junction.
What to do, in sequence:
- Check the mirror first. A car is 8 m behind at 50 km/h - it is closing on you at roughly 14 m/s and will reach your bumper in well under a second if you simply stamp on the brake. Braking without a mirror check converts a rule-following stop into a rear-end collision.
- Brake early and progressively, not late and hard: initial light pressure to light the brake lights, then build. That gives the follower both the light signal and distance to react.
- Stop before the stop line / before the junction box, not inside it, so the crossing is not blocked when the officer releases the other flow.
- If the follower is still closing, ease off rather than stopping dead, and let the car run past the line with you if that is the only way to avoid being hit - but keep the junction clear if you possibly can.
Why not just go? Because a green light is a permission granted by a machine operating on a fixed cycle; the officer is on the ground and can see something the signal cannot (a stalled car, an ambulance, a burst water main). A driver who obeys the light and hits whatever the officer was clearing up has no defence.
2. The officer waves you through. Ahead, the orange painted lane crosses the faded white solid line. Which line do you follow, and how do you handle the angled arrow board?
Read the worked answer
Follow the orange temporary marking. Reasoning: markings represent a hierarchy of recency as well as of authority. The white solid line was painted for a layout that no longer exists; the orange paint was laid down for the works that are there now. Following the old line would put you into the coned works area.
On the arrow board: the board is at 45 degrees because it has been struck, so its direction is not trustworthy, but its existence is. Treat it as a warning that the layout has changed rather than as a precise instruction, and let the painted channel and the cones do the navigating.
Practical handling:
- Reduce speed to a walking-to-30 km/h crawl through the diversion; the wet surface plus fresh paint plus loose gravel at a works site is a low-grip, low-predictability combination.
- Widen your scan for workers, plant and parked equipment, which outrank any line on the road.
- If the orange marking and the geometry of the cones genuinely contradict each other, stop and wait for the officer or a banksman to clarify rather than guessing at 50 km/h with a car 8 m behind.
What would change the answer: if the orange paint were clearly old and worn, matching a finished works scheme, the permanent white line would be the better guide - age and condition, not colour alone, decide it.
3. You assume the officer's raised hand was aimed at the cross-traffic and drive on through the green. A collision follows. How should that decision be judged?
Read the worked answer
It is judged against you, and correctly so. The officer was facing your direction. A signal directed at your approach is presumed to be for you until something positively indicates otherwise - a wave, a point, a shout, eye contact.
The reasoning chain:
- The ambiguity was visible. A raised palm facing you is not a subtle cue; the fact that it could mean two things is exactly what should have made you slow and resolve it.
- Alternative actions were available and cheap: stop, make eye contact, or wait for a wave. The cost of waiting is a few seconds. The cost of guessing wrong is a collision inside a junction, which is the worst place on the network to have one.
- The green light does not transfer the decision to the signal controller. You remain responsible for reading the scene.
The general rule this case is testing: when two instructions conflict, obey the higher authority and resolve ambiguity by slowing, not by choosing the interpretation that suits your momentum. A driver who cannot tell what an officer wants has not been given permission to proceed.