Lanes that are not yours

The other half of the command signs. These do not tell you what to do — they tell you who the lane is for, and the instruction to you is to stay out of it. Getting them wrong is how a car ends up in a bus lane in the rush hour.

Blue signs that do not tell you what to do. They tell you who a lane belongs to, and the instruction to you is to stay out of it.

Two kinds of blue sign

A blue disc with a white figure of a walking person.

The syllabus splits command signs in two. Some specify an action every driver must take — the arrows, the minimum speed. Others specify which class of road user may use a section of roadway that others may not.

This family is the second kind. A disc showing a bicycle is not telling you to cycle; it is telling you the path is for cyclists and you are not one.

Where people lose the markReading a symbol as an instruction to you. Ask instead who the symbol depicts.

The rest of this lesson

Shared or separated
The R signs
And they have hours