When You May Cross a Solid Line

First, work out which line you are looking at

The answer depends entirely on how many lines there are, so check that before anything else.

One continuous solid white line between opposing traffic is a no-overtaking line, marking RM1. Two continuous solid white lines are no-crossing lines, marking RM2. They look similar from the driver's seat and they carry different permissions — RM1 has three exceptions, RM2 has one.

A solid line running between lanes going the same way is a different marking again, a channelising line, RM3. The instruction there is that no part of your vehicle may cross it, and apart from being used between streams of traffic going the same way it carries the same significance as a no-crossing line.

Both RM1 and RM2 prohibit two things, not one: driving so that your vehicle is on the right of the line, and driving so that the vehicle or any part of it crosses the line. Straddling it is already a contravention; you do not have to complete the manoeuvre.

Can I cross it? By situation

Every "yes" below carries the same condition the marking itself carries: only if it is safe to do so. That proviso is part of the exception, not advice attached to it.

There is no exception for being in a hurry, for the car ahead being slower than the limit, or for the road being empty. The list is closed, and the safety proviso narrows it further rather than widening it.

Why the driveway case flips between one line and two

This is the single most useful thing to take away, because it is the case that comes up in your own street.

A no-overtaking line allows you to cross to gain direct access to land on the other side, and to gain direct access from land onto the roadway on the other side. Those two exceptions exist so that a solid line does not lock every property on the far side of the road out of reach.

A no-crossing line takes them away. Its only exception is passing a stationary obstruction. Double lines are painted exactly where turning across is the hazard — outside busy junctions, along stretches where right turns into properties keep causing crashes — so the whole point of the second line is to remove the turn.

So: if the line outside your gate is doubled, turning into your own driveway across it is prohibited. You go round.

"Stationary obstruction" is doing a lot of work

It is the one exception both markings share, and the whole test it applies is whether the thing is moving.

A broken-down vehicle, a delivery van standing in the lane, a skip, roadworks plant, a fallen branch — stationary, so the exception is available. A slow tractor, a struggling truck on a hill, a cyclist grinding uphill at 12 km/h — moving, so it is not.

That distinction is what separates a lawful manoeuvre from an overtaking offence, and it is also the sensible one: going round something that is standing still is a short, predictable move, and passing something that is still going forward means committing to the oncoming lane for a distance you cannot judge from behind.

The safety proviso still applies on top. "It is safe to do so" on a road where a solid line has been painted because sight distance is restricted usually means waiting until you can actually see, not edging out to look.

The emergency vehicle behind you

This is the case where the sources genuinely do not give a clean answer, and it is worth saying so rather than making one up.

Regulation 308(1)(h) requires you to give immediate and absolute right of way to a vehicle sounding its siren or displaying its identification lamp. The exception lists attached to RM1 and RM2 do not include doing so. Nothing in the regulations expressly says which of the two gives way to the other.

What the sources do support is the action that satisfies both. Regulation 298(3) tells a driver being overtaken to move as near the left edge of the roadway as is possible without endangering anyone, and not to accelerate. Doing exactly that — pulling left, slowing, holding your line — gives the emergency vehicle the room it needs without putting your car on the wrong side of a line painted because the sight distance there is bad.

Crossing to the right of a solid line to let something past also puts you into the oncoming lane on a stretch where oncoming traffic cannot see you, which is the risk the line exists to prevent.

When an officer or a temporary sign overrides the paint

Section 58(1) of the Act requires every driver to comply with a direction conveyed by a road traffic sign, "unless otherwise directed by a traffic officer". Those last five words are the override. An officer directing traffic across a solid line at a crash scene or a roadworks contraflow is giving a lawful instruction and you follow it.

Temporary signs are not a lesser class of sign. The TR-series — the temporary equivalents of the ordinary regulatory signs — carry the same force at roadworks as their permanent counterparts do elsewhere, and where a contraflow is set up the temporary arrangement is the one in effect.

What is not an override: your own judgement that the line is badly placed, that nothing is coming, or that the roadworks finished last week and nobody has repainted. The marking on the road is the instruction until somebody with authority changes it.

Common questions