Traffic rules and right-of-way
Traffic rules and right-of-way
This domain tests priority: who must wait, who may proceed, and how lanes, distance and speed rules keep traffic predictable. Traffic in Palestine keeps to the right.
The ladder of authority
An officer's signals beat traffic lights, lights beat signs, signs beat markings, and markings beat general rules. Apply that ladder before applying any instinct about who arrived first.
Default priorities
- Keep as far right as practical; overtake on the left and return only when you can see the overtaken vehicle in your mirror.
- At an unmarked junction of equal roads, give way to traffic approaching from your right.
- A vehicle turning left across oncoming traffic gives way to vehicles going straight and to traffic turning right.
- Emerging from a side road, private driveway or petrol station, you give way to everything already on the road.
- At a roundabout, vehicles already circulating have priority; signal right before your exit and watch for pedestrians on the exit.
- Pedestrians on a crossing have priority over every vehicle, including one that has already started to turn.
Distance and lane discipline
Keep a two-second gap in dry weather and at least double it in rain or at night. Hold your lane through junctions instead of drifting into the path of a turning vehicle. Where lanes merge, the vehicle already in the continuing lane has priority over traffic joining it.
Worked example
Two cars reach an unmarked crossroads: A is going straight on the wider road, B is emerging from a narrow lane on A's right. B gives way - not because of the right-hand rule but because B is leaving a minor road. The right-hand rule only settles junctions of equal status.
Traps
Treating priority as a right to insist on. Forgetting that a left turn crosses oncoming traffic. Assuming a car signalling right will actually turn; wait for the movement to confirm it.