2.3 Mandatory (Regulatory) Signs

2.3 Mandatory (Regulatory) Signs

Quick Answer: Mandatory signs are circular with a blue background and white symbols, and they give positive orders — keep left, turn right, pass either side, follow the roundabout, use this lane, do not drive slower than this. Disobeying a blue circle is an offence in exactly the same way as disobeying a red one. The memory line for the whole chapter is: red circle forbids, blue circle commands.

Why Blue Circles Matter on the Exam

Candidates lose marks on mandatory signs for one reason: they learn symbols instead of learning colour plus shape. A white arrow can appear on a blue circle, on a blue rectangle, and inside a red circle, and it means something different every time. The DVLA question bank exploits this deliberately, offering you the same arrow on different backgrounds and asking what you must do.

Fix the logic first and the symbols become easy:

• Red border, circular — a prohibition. Something you were free to do is now banned.
• Blue fill, circular — a mandatory instruction. Something you might not otherwise do is now compulsory.
• Both are legally enforceable. Neither is advice.

The Core Mandatory Signs

Keep Left and Keep Right

These are the blue circles you will meet most often in Ghana. They appear at traffic islands, at the nose of a median where a dual carriageway begins, at pedestrian refuges, and at roadworks where a lane is coned off. The arrow is not a suggestion about the tidier line — it is the legally required side. Because Ghana drives on the right, a keep-right arrow at a median nose is the normal case, and drivers who cut to the wrong side of an island meet oncoming traffic head-on.

Ahead Only, Turn Left, Turn Right

At a junction governed by one of these signs, the permitted movement is the only permitted movement. An ahead-only sign on the approach to a crossroads means you may not turn even if the side road looks empty and even if your destination lies down it. Ghanaian towns use these heavily to keep one-way systems and market-area circulation working; ignoring them pushes you into oncoming traffic on a one-way street whose indicated direction is binding.

The Mandatory Roundabout Sign

The blue circle with three white arrows chasing each other in a ring is worth memorising on its own, because it carries two instructions at once:

1. Follow the circular flow around the central island. In Ghana that flow is anticlockwise, because traffic keeps right.
2. Read together with the Give Way line painted across the entry, it means yield to vehicles already circulating, which reach you from your left.

A common exam distractor claims the sign means you must stop and wait even when the roundabout is clear. It does not — a roundabout entry carries a give-way duty, not a stop duty, so you may flow straight on when the circulating carriageway is genuinely empty.

Minimum Speed

Less common in Ghana but still examinable: a blue circle with a plain white number sets a minimum, telling you that driving below that speed obstructs traffic. Compare it directly with the red-bordered circle carrying the same number, which sets a maximum. Same digits, opposite meaning, distinguished only by the colour of the ring.

How Mandatory Signs Are Cancelled

Where a mandatory instruction ends, it is cancelled either by a grey circle with a black diagonal slash, by a sign showing the opposite arrangement, or simply by the junction at which the restriction naturally expires. Unlike a warning triangle, which applies to the hazard it announces and then lapses, a blue-circle order remains in force along the whole stretch it governs.

Traps the Question Writers Use

• "Blue signs are advisory." They are not. A blue circle is as binding as a red one.
• Arrow on blue circle vs arrow on blue rectangle. The circle is an order about your movement; the rectangle (Section 2.4) shows a binding one-way traffic direction.
• Blue number vs red-ringed number. Blue is a floor, red is a ceiling.
• "The roundabout sign means stop." It means circulate and give way.
• Keep-left/keep-right at roadworks. Candidates assume roadworks signs are temporary suggestions; they carry the same legal force as permanent ones.

Learn these seven sign families and the cancellation rule, and every mandatory-sign question on the DVLA theory test reduces to a single decision: what is the blue circle telling me to start doing?