Road Signs and Signals
This domain checks whether you can read Mauritania's French-model signing system at a glance: sign shape and colour, road markings, traffic-light phases and the hand signals of a police officer, and whether you act on the warning before you reach the hazard. Signs carry their legend in Arabic and French, so word-based panels may appear in either language, but the shape and colour code never changes.
Sign families
- Danger: white triangle with a red border (bend, livestock, level crossing, road narrowing). It warns you to slow down now, not at the hazard.
- Prohibition: red circle - speed limit, no overtaking, no entry (red disc with a white horizontal bar), no pedestrians.
- Mandatory: blue circle - direction to follow, compulsory track for a vehicle class.
- Information: blue or green rectangles - parking, hospital, direction to a route nationale.
- Priority: inverted triangle = give way; octagon = STOP; yellow diamond = priority road.
Lights and markings
Red means stop before the line. Amber alone means stop unless you are so close that braking would be dangerous. Green means proceed only if your exit is clear. Flashing amber means the lights are out of service, so the signs or the priority-to-the-right rule apply. A continuous white line may not be crossed; a broken line may be crossed to overtake when safe. Zebra markings give pedestrians priority. An officer's signals override both signs and lights.
Worked example
You meet a triangle showing a fence, a plate reading 150 m, and barrier lights that start flashing. Reasoning: the triangle announces a level crossing with barriers, the plate fixes the distance, and flashing red lamps mean a train is coming. You slow, then stop before the barrier and wait until the lights go out and the booms are fully raised. Trying to beat the barrier is a fail and, in real life, often fatal.
Traps that cost marks
Treating a give-way triangle as optional instead of slowing and yielding; confusing no entry with a one-way street sign; ignoring the distance plate under a danger sign; reading amber as an instruction to accelerate; and missing signs placed on the left of a one-way carriageway, which still apply to you.