Chapter 4

Priority & Right of Way

The default priority-to-the-right rule, its exceptions, priority roads, yielding on narrow roads, priority when turning, and special priority for buses and emergency vehicles.

Priority rules are the single most tested topic on the Belgian theory exam. Learn the default rule first, then its exceptions — most exam mistakes come from forgetting an exception applies.

The default rule: priority to the right

Unless a sign, traffic light, or road marking says otherwise, at any junction you must give way to traffic approaching from your right. This applies even if the road on the right looks smaller or less important — the rule is about direction, not road size.

You — must give way

Coming from the right — goes first

What if four vehicles arrive at once?

At a crossroads with priority-to-the-right and no other controls, this rule quietly relies on there being one clear "most-right" driver. With a vehicle arriving from all four directions at once, each one has a different vehicle to its own right — so each is waiting on another, forming a closed loop where no one holds absolute priority. The rule alone cannot break the tie.

Each driver must yield to the one on their right — but with four arriving together, that forms a closed loop: nobody has absolute priority. Slow right down and proceed only once it's clearly safe, using eye contact or a hand signal if needed.

B17 — reminder: priority to the right applies at the next junction

Exceptions to priority to the right

Leaving a driveway, an unpaved track, or a car park onto a public road: you must always give way to everyone on that road, no matter which direction they come from.
Crossing a cycle track or pavement to reach a driveway or leave a side road: you must give way to any cyclist or pedestrian using it.
Trams always have priority, at every junction, in every configuration — even on a priority road, and even when they approach from your left.
There's a twist when a continuous cycle lane runs through the junction: the usual line-up gets reshuffled. Cyclists and two-wheeled mopeds permitted on that lane go first, drivers arriving from the right follow behind them, and the driver who would otherwise owe priority to the right goes last of all.
The same reshuffling happens where a continuous pavement or a pedestrian crossing runs across the junction. Pedestrians on it get to go first, ahead of both the driver arriving from the right and the driver who owes them priority — neither may enter until those pedestrians have cleared through.
Coming out of a street you're not supposed to be travelling on (the wrong way down a one-way street, say) strips away any right-of-way you might otherwise claim from the right — with one carve-out: a sub-sign that specifically names certain drivers as exempt from that restriction lets those particular drivers hang onto their priority.
Roundabouts sit outside the priority-to-the-right rule too, but the logic flips the other way: it's whoever is already looping around the ring that gets to go, and everyone waiting to join has to slot in behind them.

A cycle suggestion lane looks similar to a continuous cycle lane but behaves completely differently, so keep them apart in your head: a suggestion lane is just a dashed, sometimes coloured strip painted where no dedicated cycle track exists, and none of the reshuffling above applies to it. Ordinary priority-to-the-right governs it end to end — a driver arriving from the right has no business stopping to usher suggestion-lane cyclists through, and those cyclists owe priority to that driver exactly as any other road user would.

Slowing down, or even coming to a complete stop, doesn't cost a right-hand driver their priority — pulling out ahead of them is still off-limits for you. That said, the rule isn't a life sentence: if traffic from the right never lets up enough for you to move at all, you're entitled to ease forward the moment a genuinely safe gap opens, the same courtesy every driver eventually owes the next one stuck behind them.

Leaving a driveway, unpaved track, or car park — always give way, from both directions

Priority roads

A priority road overrides the default rule: once you pass a B9 sign, you keep priority over every side road at every junction, even ones from the right, until a B11 sign cancels it or you leave that road.

B9 — priority road

B11 — end of priority road

B13 gives advance warning that a priority road is about to end, at the distance shown on the sign — after it, watch for the B11 sign and be ready to give way like any other driver.

Keep an eye out for a small plate under a B9 sign — a bold white line bent toward the left or right lives there sometimes, and it's telling you the priority road doesn't run straight through the next junction, it bends. Track that bend to stay on the priority route; drive straight through instead and you'd actually be peeling off it.

Priority at just the next junction

B15 doesn't look like B9, and its promise is smaller too: instead of holding priority over a whole stretch of road, it hands it to you for exactly one junction, the one right in front of you, and nothing beyond. That single junction still comes with a perk shared by priority roads, though — a safe left-hand overtake right before or at it is fair game.

B15 — priority at the next junction only

Yielding on narrow roads

Where a road narrows to one usable lane (often near roadworks or a bridge), these two signs tell you who must wait: B19 means you must yield to oncoming traffic; B21 means the opposite direction must yield to you.

B19 — give way to oncoming traffic

B21 — priority over oncoming traffic

Manoeuvres always require giving priority

A handful of actions get grouped together under the label 'manoeuvre': switching lanes, cutting across the carriageway, pulling into or out of a parking space, exiting a private property, doing a U-turn mid-street, or reversing. The moment you're doing any of these, priority simply isn't something you have — extra vigilance is on you, endangering anyone else on the road (pedestrians very much included) is off the table, and giving way to everyone else is the baseline expectation.

Priority when turning

When you turn left or right at a junction, you must give way to oncoming vehicles that are going straight ahead or turning right, and to any pedestrians or cyclists already crossing or using the road you are turning into.

Picture two drivers approaching each other head-on, each about to turn a different way — one left, one right. The right-turner's path is the shorter arc, and that shorter arc wins: the left-turner is the one who has to hold back and let them through.
Now picture both of those oncoming drivers turning the same way — left — with no arrows on the road to guide them. Rather than cutting across each other's path, each one swings past the other on the right, mirroring how they'd pass if going straight.

A left turn goes more smoothly if you claim your spot early — drift toward the left edge of your lane well before the junction, a habit with its own name, 'pre-sorting.' Doing this broadcasts your plan to everyone behind you and frees up the space on your right for through-traffic and right-turners to use. From there, the sequence that gets you through the turn safely runs: mirrors plus a genuine glance at your blind spot (a mirror by itself will always miss something), the indicator, a real reduction in speed, and only after all that, the turn itself.

Your obligation to give way when changing direction isn't limited to the lane you're turning into — it stretches across the whole public road you're on, so anyone using a different part of it, say a pedestrian midway through crossing a central reservation to reach the far carriageway of a divided road, still comes ahead of you.

Buses leaving a stop

Watch for the turn signal on a bus or trolleybus sitting at a stop within a built-up area — the moment it flicks on, anyone driving behind it in the same direction owes it room: ease off, and come to a complete stop if that's what it takes, so it can pull back into the traffic flow. Step outside the built-up area, though, and this courtesy disappears entirely.

There's a real limit to who this courtesy is for: it belongs strictly to scheduled public-transport buses and trolleybuses. A coach, or a bus running schoolchildren or workers around, gets none of it once its passengers have boarded or stepped off — its driver is stuck doing what everyone else re-entering traffic already has to do, hunting for a safe gap on their own.

Priority for emergency vehicles

Two signals running together — the blue flashing lights and the siren, both at once — mark out an emergency vehicle (a police car, an ambulance, a fire engine) as one that outranks every other rule of the road. There's no negotiating this: back off the accelerator right away, and edge over to the right if that's what clearing its path takes.

Spot the light without hearing the siren and the equation changes completely — that overriding claim to priority evaporates, and ordinary priority rules take back over as if the vehicle were any other. The rule is strict on this point: nothing short of light and siren running together activates the obligation to give way.

Giving way to a priority vehicle never entitles you to follow it and share its speed advantage — even if a family member is inside it. Ordinary speed limits still apply to you.

Chapter quiz

Check what you remember. Questions and answer order are shuffled every attempt, and you'll have 20 seconds to answer each one.