Take the signs practice
Ten road sign and marking questions, free, no account needed, with a written explanation on every answer — including why the sign you nearly picked is the one it is easy to pick. It is the same format the readiness test scores you on.
Start the free signs practiceWhat the signs section covers
- What is examined
- Road traffic signs, including markingsRegulation 104(2)(a)(ii)
- Road markings
- Part of this section, not a section of their ownLines, arrows, painted words and symbols all count as signs
- Same for every licence class
- Yes — only the controls section is class-specific
- Signs in our library
- 380, each verified against the official chartWarning, regulatory, guidance, information and temporary, plus markings
Quiz yourself on the system first
Almost every signs question can be answered from two features you can see before you recognise the sign at all: its colour and its shape. A red ring prohibits. A blue disc reserves. A triangle on its point yields; a triangle point-up warns. An octagon is a stop sign, and it is the only eight-sided sign on the road.
If those four sentences are solid, an unfamiliar sign is still half-readable, and the questions built on near-identical pairs stop being traps. If they are not solid, no amount of quizzing on individual pictures will fix it — you will simply learn the pictures you were quizzed on.
So the order that works is: the system, then the pairs that are easy to confuse, then volume. Volume last, not first.
A written self-test
A white disc with a red ring around it and a black 60 inside.
A speed limit sign: the maximum is 60 km/h from that point onwards. The red ring is doing its usual job — prohibiting anything above the number. The same number on a blue disc would be the opposite instruction, a minimum speed rather than a maximum.
A red ring with a picture of a truck inside it.
Goods vehicles are prohibited. The red ring is the prohibition marker; whatever is pictured inside it is the thing that may not proceed.
A blue disc with a white arrow pointing left.
A command, not a prohibition: you must turn or keep left as the arrow shows. Blue circular signs command or reserve; the same instruction with a red ring around it would forbid the manoeuvre instead.
A yellow diamond-shaped board at the side of a stretch of roadworks.
A temporary sign. Yellow is reserved for temporary signage, and where a temporary sign conflicts with a permanent one, the temporary sign is the one you obey.
A triangle standing on its point, with a red border and nothing inside it.
The yield sign. Give way to traffic on the road you are entering or crossing, and stop only if giving way requires it. It differs from a stop sign in that it does not demand a halt where the road is clear.
A broken white line painted along the centre of a two-way road.
A warning marking, not a prohibition. You may cross it when it is safe to do so — which on a two-way road means being certain about oncoming traffic before you commit.
A solid white line along the centre of the road, with a broken line beside it on your side.
The line on your side governs your behaviour. Broken on your side means you may cross when safe; the solid line facing oncoming traffic forbids them from crossing towards you.
A triangle point-up with a red border and a picture of two children inside.
A warning sign: children are likely ahead, typically near a school. It commands nothing on its own, but it tells you what the next few hundred metres require of you.
The mistake
Quizzing on signs and skipping markings. Painted lines, arrows and symbols are examined in the same section as the signs on posts, and they carry some of the strictest rules on the road — a double solid line has exactly one exception.
The other one is quizzing only on signs you already half-know. The value of a quiz is the questions you get wrong; a run of easy ones tells you nothing except that you enjoyed it.
Common questions
How many signs do I actually need to know?
Fewer than the several hundred that exist. The test draws on the common ones and on the pairs that are easy to confuse, and both are far more tractable once you can read colour and shape.
Are road markings really in the signs section?
Yes. They are road traffic signs in law, and the test examines them alongside the signs on posts rather than as a separate area.
Is the quiz free?
Ten signs questions are free with no account, and each carries a written explanation. The full question bank and the written sign library are part of the paid access.
Does the quiz use the real sign artwork?
Yes — the signs shown are the official public-domain South African and SADC artwork, verified against the Department of Transport sign chart rather than redrawn.
Sources
- National Road Traffic Regulations, 2000 — regulation 104(2)(a)(ii)Road traffic signs as one of the three areas the learner's test examines.
- National Road Traffic Regulations, 2000 — Schedule 1The prescribed signs and their meanings, including the yield sign and the speed limit signs.
- National Road Traffic Regulations, 2000 — regulation 298No-overtaking lines, and which line governs which side of the road.
- Department of Transport, South African Road Traffic Signs Manual, Volume 1 Chapter 7Sign classes and the colour conventions: red rings prohibit, blue discs command or reserve, yellow is temporary.
- Department of Transport official road traffic sign chartThe artwork and codes every sign in our library is verified against.
Last updated 2026-09-21.