Chapter 6

Traffic Lights & Signals from Authorized Persons

The priority hierarchy between people, lights and signs, what each light colour really means, the flashing orange light, directional arrows, and the hand signals used by police and other authorized persons.

Think of traffic control as a pecking order, not a set of equals: a human directing traffic outranks every fixed light or sign, and once no human is present, lights and signs together outrank the general priority rules covered in earlier chapters.

The priority hierarchy

Conflicting instructions at the same spot resolve top-down: whatever an authorized person directing traffic tells you settles the matter outright; failing that, the traffic light or the priority sign posted there decides it; only when neither is present do you fall back on the general priority rules — priority to the right, priority roads, and the rest.

The three light colours

Red: stop before the line. Full stop, no exceptions.
Green: you may go, but you must still give way to vehicles or pedestrians still clearing the junction, and to any priority still owed under other rules.
Solid orange (amber): treat it as a stop order too, unless braking in time would genuinely be unsafe at that point — then, and only then, easing through is the better call.

Locate the light meant for you by where it sits, not by counting every light you can see: the governing one stands to your right at the stop line. Some junctions echo it overhead or on the left as a backup, but a light appearing exclusively on your left, with none on your right, simply isn't addressed to you.

While braking to a stop at a red light, do not press the clutch pedal down early — staying in gear lets the engine assist your braking. Once stopped and waiting, do not keep revving the engine to 'warm it up' or pass the time; that only wastes fuel and adds needless emissions.

Look down at some junctions and you'll spot two stop lines painted one behind the other, carving out a dedicated holding pen for cyclists and two-wheeled mopeds. Cars belong at the rear line, the first one they meet; the front line, tucked right up against the junction, is reserved for the cyclists and mopeds waiting ahead of the cars.

A pedestrian crossing is off-limits as a parking spot no matter what colour your light shows — green included. Find the junction ahead still congested, and the right move is holding your position short of the crossing, not creeping onto it to wait.

A priority sign bolted underneath a traffic light isn't there for decoration, but it's also not always live — it wakes up only once the lights stop functioning as lights: powered down, stuck flashing, or simply irrelevant to the lane you're in. The moment a working light is speaking to you, that's the instruction you follow; the sign underneath goes unread.

Flashing orange light

Don't mistake a flashing orange light for a broken one — it's doing exactly what it's meant to do, which is common after dark or at junctions that see little traffic. Nothing about it demands a stop. Ease off the accelerator, stay alert, and sort out who goes first using the same priority rules you'd use if the light weren't there at all.

Directional arrows

Not every signal head sticks to the plain round shape — arrows show up too, sometimes in place of it, sometimes alongside. Treat a lit green arrow as narrower in scope than a round green: it clears you for exactly the direction it points and nothing else. So when the only green glowing there is shaped like an arrow, with no round green anywhere in sight, every other direction from that lane stays closed to you, regardless of what would normally be fine.

A row of green arrows lit above every lane on a wide road is permission to use any of those lanes — it is not permission to treat them as interchangeable. The rightmost lane is still your default; a move left only makes sense for one of three reasons: you're passing someone, a blue destination sign is steering you that way, or the traffic ahead has bunched up.

A green arrow together with a red light

A red round light doesn't rule out movement entirely if a green arrow is glowing beside it — that combination carves out a narrow exception just for the arrow's direction. Taking it, though, puts the full burden of caution on you: everyone else with a legitimate claim to that junction, pedestrians included, gets to go first.

The green evacuation arrow

Junctions where left-turners routinely get stranded mid-crossing, hunting for a gap, sometimes get a fix: a dedicated green evacuation arrow that switches on the instant the oncoming lane goes to red. It's a signal aimed squarely at the drivers already stuck out there — telling them the coast is now clear to finish turning left. No oncoming traffic to begin with? Then you never needed to wait for the arrow; finish your turn whenever it's safe. What the arrow never does is invite fresh entries into the junction against a red light — it exists purely to release drivers who were already caught inside it.

1. Green light — pull into the junction to turn left, oncoming traffic still goes straight

2. Wait in the middle of the junction until the oncoming lane clears

3. Once clear (or the evacuation arrow lights up), complete your turn

Traffic lights for pedestrians and cyclists

A traffic light's silhouette tells you its audience: a pedestrian shape addresses pedestrians and nobody else; a bicycle shape addresses cyclists and riders of two-wheeled mopeds; and where both shapes share one light, it's speaking to pedestrians and cyclists together. None of these silhouette lights are written for you as a car driver — you can drive past all of them without a second glance.

There's a special carve-out layered on top of a red or orange light: a small extra light flashing orange, showing a bicycle alongside a flashing arrow. Its presence hands cyclists and two-wheeled moped riders a way through — strictly along the arrow's line, and strictly after everyone else with a legitimate claim on that junction, including pedestrians and drivers arriving from other directions, has been let through first.

Crossing diagonally: arrows around a cyclist or pedestrian light

A handful of junctions install a special all-directions light for cyclists and pedestrians: arrows framing a bicycle or pedestrian silhouette on all four sides. It's a signal that only makes sense if every car, everywhere on that junction, is stuck on red at the same moment — which is exactly the case, freeing whoever it lights up for to cross however they like, straight lines and diagonals both. Moped riders sharing the cycle track get the same freedom.

Trams read their own private signal language, built from shapes rather than colours, and worth memorising as a set: think of the inverted triangle as standing in for green, the plain circle as standing in for solid orange, and the flat horizontal bar as standing in for red. Two more shapes narrow things down further — a bar standing upright restricts the tram to going straight ahead, while a bar tilted toward one side restricts it to that side only. Should the circle be flashing orange rather than steady, the tram may pass, but only cautiously and only by working out priority the ordinary way.

Signals from authorized persons

Hand signals from a police officer, or from another authorized person such as a traffic warden posted at roadworks or outside a school, sit at the very top of that ladder — nothing below them, not the lights, not the priority signs, not the general rules, gets consulted while they're actively directing traffic.

Arms raised — everyone stops

Arms out to the sides — front & back stop, left & right go

A straight, upright arm (or both): the word this posture spells out is 'stop,' aimed at anyone standing across from the person giving it.
Both arms opened out sideways, like a cross: the traffic lined up in front of or behind the person is what's being told to stop; anyone level with an outstretched arm reads it as a green light to keep moving.
A red torch swept back and forth in a driver's direction: read it exactly the same way as the raised-arm posture — come to a stop.
An arm bobbing up and down: this is the cue to ease off — slow down.
The arm sweeping around in a circle: this one means the opposite — pick up the pace.

Timing matters here: catch the raised-arm signal while you're already partway through the junction, and the right move is finishing your way out of it promptly, not freezing in place to await further instruction. A whistle, on its own, carries no meaning at all — its only job is making sure you notice the arm movement that's about to follow. And don't discount a lit-up 'STOP' panel mounted on a vehicle's roof either; plenty of unmarked police cars use exactly that to command a stop.

People who can signal, but are not authorized persons

Not everyone waving at traffic carries the same legal weight. Marshals at a race or public event, traffic wardens, crossing guards stationed outside a school, and whoever's leading a formation of walkers, cyclists, motorcyclists, or horseback riders can all wave you through or hold you back — yet none of them can write you a ticket, because none of them count as authorized persons. There's one narrow exception where they gain real teeth: standing at a junction that has no traffic lights, kitted out with a black-yellow-red armband and holding a C3 sign aloft on a pole, they're permitted a brief hold on traffic passing through.

Trams often have their own separate signal heads, sometimes shaped differently from ordinary traffic lights — but the same hierarchy applies: an authorized person's signal always comes first.

Tram drivers themselves do not have to follow the ordinary traffic regulations that apply to other road users — but they still must obey the orders of an authorized person directing traffic, and the traffic lights.

Chapter quiz

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