10.1 Signals to Drivers Behind

Signals to Drivers Behind

Guyana keeps to the left. Typical cars used for the learner test are right-hand drive, so you sit on the off side — the side nearest the centre of a two-way road. When Regulation 180 of the Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic Regulations (Cap. 51:02) tells you to signal drivers in the rear, you almost always put the right arm out of the off-side window, where following traffic can actually see it. The duty is not limited to motor cars. Every person driving or propelling a vehicle on a road shall, when necessary, give the appropriate traffic signal described in the regulation. That includes hire cars, motorcycles, pedal cycles, and other riders covered by the Guyana Road Traffic Code's rules for drivers and riders.

This section is independent study of the Guyana Police Force (GPF) Learner/Driver Theoretical Programme (April 2025 package) and the Road Traffic Code issued for road users. Traffic Headquarters at Eve Leary examines these postures because following drivers cannot see your feet on the pedals. Signs, signals, and road markings are the language of the road; rear arm signals are the part of that language aimed at the vehicle closing on you.

Who is behind you, and why they cannot guess

A rear signal answers one practical question: what are you about to do with your speed or your place in the stream? You need this family of signals when you will slow or stop, turn right or leave a line of traffic, invite an overtake, or turn left. You do not use them to claim a gap. The Theoretical Programme is blunt: the purpose of your signal is to tell other road users what you propose to do; having given it, you remain responsible for seeing that it is safe to carry out the intention.

Look first. Road Traffic Code rule 72 requires you to look in the driving mirror from time to time and always before you signal, change course, overtake, turn, or stop. Rule 73 adds that a motorcyclist, even with a mirror fitted, must glance before signalling, moving off, changing course, overtaking, or turning. On Mandela Avenue, Sheriff Street, or the East Bank Demerara corridor, a late arm is as useless as silence: the minibus behind has already committed.

The four Regulation 180(a) rear signals

Learn the posture, not a homemade nickname. The table is the syllabus list; the paragraphs below are how the exam tries to mix the four up.

Slow down or stop

Extend the right arm with the palm of the hand turned downwards and move the arm slowly up and down, keeping the wrist loose. The loose wrist is the exam tell. A stiff chop, a pointing finger, or a rigid horizontal arm is a different message.

Rule 51 of the Road Traffic Code: signal clearly your intention to stop before you start slowing down. Approaching a pedestrian crossing on the East Coast, a school safety patrol, a SLOW plate, or a queue at a Georgetown light, following traffic needs time to match your braking. On wet roads, and on the approaches to the Demerara Harbour Bridge and Canje Bridge where the Code already tells you to drive carefully within the prescribed or posted limit, a surprise stop without this signal is how rear-end collisions start. Thinking distance for an alert driver in the Code's table is one foot per mile-per-hour; surprise braking adds the following driver's thinking distance on top of yours.

Do not confuse this with the police straight ahead signal, which pumps the forearm in a vertical plane, or with the turn-right arm, which is rigid and horizontal.

Turn right, or leave a line of traffic

Extend the right arm and hand, with the palm turned to the front, and hold them rigid in a horizontal position straight out from the off side of the vehicle, or extend the off-side direction indicator. This is the only rear signal for which Regulation 180(a) expressly offers an electrical indicator as an alternative.

Leave a line of traffic matters in Georgetown hold-ups and on multi-lane approaches: you are telling following drivers that you will pull out of the near-side stream, not merely that a junction exists. Rule 46: well before you turn right, take full account of the position and movement of traffic following you; when safe, signal and take a position just left of the middle of the road (or, on a one-way street, on the right side of the street). Wait until there is a safe gap between you and approaching vehicles before you complete the turn. Rule 47: be particularly careful when turning right across oncoming traffic and give way to it. Rule 36: overtake on the right except when the driver in front has signalled an intention to turn right. Your horizontal off-side signal is therefore also a warning to a faster vehicle not to pass you on the off side while you wait to cut across.

If you use the indicator, it must actually operate. A failed bulb on a learner car carrying L plates (Regulation 28 of the Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic Regulations) is not a signal. At night on the Soesdyke–Linden Highway a lit off-side lamp is often clearer than an arm; in bright sun with a dirty lens, the arm may be clearer. Either way, the message is the same prescribed message.

Ready to be overtaken

Extend the right arm and hand below the level of the shoulder and move them backwards and forwards. Rule 35: if you are ready to be overtaken, give the appropriate signal; do not increase your speed when being overtaken; the courteous driver slows to help the other driver overtake safely. Keep left while being overtaken (rule 22). This is not an order to the vehicle behind, and it does not waive a continuous yellow no-overtaking line or any place rule 34 lists as a no-overtake location (corner or bend, road junction, pedestrian crossing, bridge or narrow culvert, top of a hill, where the road narrows).

Exam trap: both this signal and the left-turn rear signal start below the shoulder. Ready-to-be-overtaken stays low and pumps back and forth. Left turn then circles upward until the wrist is in line with the head.

Turn left (to the rear)

Extend the right arm and hand below the level of the shoulder, then move the arm upwards in a circular motion so that on completion of the movement the wrist is in line with the head and the fingers of the right hand point inwards. Rule 48: if you intend to turn left, keep to the left, give the turn-left signal in good time, and do not swing out to the right. Swinging wide to the off side to cut a left corner is a classic fail on both the theory paper and the later practical test with a Certifying Officer.

Because you sit on the right of a typical Guyana car, this circle is still made with the right arm on the off side. Following drivers see a distinctive circle, not a left-hand flap hidden by the body of the car. Do not substitute a casual wave out of the passenger window; 180(a)(iv) describes the right-arm circle. The near-side direction indicator is named in 180(b)(ii) for signalling left to a police constable or traffic ahead, not as the wording of the rear-left arm signal.

Direction indicators and what they are not

Electrical direction indicators are alternatives only where Regulation 180 names them. For traffic behind you:

• Off-side indicator means I am going to turn right or leave a line of traffic — the same message as the rigid horizontal arm.
• Slow/stop and ready-to-be-overtaken have no listed indicator substitute. Flashing both indicators as hazard lights is not the Highway Code slow-down signal. A headlight flash is not a prescribed rear signal either.

Give only signals prescribed in the Highway Code, clearly and in good time. Invented gestures — a thumbs-up, waving someone through from a moving car, pointing at a pothole — are not Regulation 180 signals and they do not protect you if a following driver misreads the manoeuvre.