Emergency Vehicles and Traffic Officer Signals

The short version

Your duty when one approaches

Give an immediate and absolute right of wayRegulation 308(1)(h)

What that vehicle may then do

Disregard a road sign, or exceed the speed limitSections 58(3) and 60 of the Act

Condition on that

Due regard to the safety of other traffic, siren and lamp both operatingSections 58(3) and 60

Blue lamp

Police, traffic officer, defence force on police dutyRegulation 176(3)

Red lamp

Ambulance, fire-fighting, rescue vehicle, or a doctor on callRegulation 176(2) and (5)

Amber lamp

Breakdown, maintenance, essential services, an abnormal loadRegulation 176(4)

A traffic officer's signal

Overrides a sign or a signalSection 58(1); regulation 329

The duty is on you, and it's absolute

Regulation 308(1)(h) is short and leaves no room to weigh it up: a driver shall not fail to give an immediate and absolute right of way to a vehicle sounding a device or bell, or displaying an identification lamp, under section 58(3) or 60 of the Act or regulation 176. "Immediate and absolute" is stronger language than most right-of-way rules in the regulations use — there's no balancing it against your own turn, your own lane, or how close you already are to your exit.

That's the driver-facing half of the rule. The other half is what it lets the emergency vehicle itself do, and it's narrower than "anything, because it's an emergency".

What an emergency vehicle may actually do, and what it must do first

Section 58(3) of the Act lets a fire-fighting vehicle, a rescue vehicle, an ambulance, a traffic officer on duty, or someone engaged in civil protection under the Civil Protection Act disregard the directions of a road sign. Section 60 lets the same list of drivers exceed the general speed limit. Both come with the same two conditions attached, not one: the vehicle must still be driven with due regard to the safety of other traffic, and — this is the part that's easy to miss — the vehicle must be fitted with a device emitting a prescribed sound and an identification lamp, and both the sound and the lamp must actually be in operation while the sign is disregarded or the limit exceeded.

In other words, the exemption isn't a status the vehicle has all the time — it's switched on and off with the siren and the lamp. A fire engine returning from a call with its lights and siren off is bound by the same signs and the same speed limit as anyone else.

Lamp colours mean specific things, not just "official vehicle"

Regulation 176 assigns colours by role, and mixing them up is where the misconception in the mistake below comes from. Blue, alone or combined with amber or red, is reserved for police, municipal police, traffic officers, and defence force members authorised for police duties — and it's the one colour ordinary vehicles are flatly prohibited from fitting. Red is for an ambulance, a fire-fighting or rescue vehicle, and — on its own, narrower basis — a medical practitioner responding in the course of their profession.

Amber is a different category altogether: it marks a vehicle maintaining the road, a breakdown vehicle, one carrying an abnormal load, or one engaged in essential public services such as electricity supply — none of which carries the priority a siren-and-lamp emergency vehicle does. Green marks a vehicle engaged in civil protection. Seeing an amber light doesn't mean the same absolute right of way regulation 308(1)(h) requires for a sounding, red- or blue-lit vehicle.

A traffic officer's own signal beats everything else

Section 58(1) makes the point directly: the general duty to obey a road sign applies "unless otherwise directed by a traffic officer". Regulation 329 sets out what that direction looks like — the signals a traffic officer uses for controlling traffic are laid down in Schedule 1, and an officer isn't limited to only those either; they may give any other signal they judge appropriate.

There's one specific rule worth knowing inside that: once an officer has given a stop signal to a driver or a pedestrian, they may lower the signalling hand or use it to give other signals, but the person who was told to stop must not proceed until the officer specifically signals them to go. Lowering the hand isn't the same as being waved through.

Common questions