13.1 No Entry, No Turns and No U-Turn

No entry, no turns, and no U-turn

The April 2025 Guyana Road Traffic Code prints TRAFFIC SIGNS — EXAMPLES OF SIGNS WHICH MUST BE OBSERVED, then an INTERNATIONAL TRAFFIC SIGNS numbered list (signs 1 to 40) and a CONVENTIONAL BRITISH SIGNS plate page. Chapter 12 taught the upright warning triangles, the inverted Give Way triangle, and the octagonal STOP. This chapter is independent OpenExamPrep study of the circular prohibitory, mandatory, priority, parking, and information plates in that same list — especially signs 29 to 40 — together with the British No entry disc. It is not a Traffic Headquarters booklet and it does not claim official approval, partnership, or exact equivalence with the three-book package issued from Eve Leary.

Quick Answer: A red disc with a white horizontal bar is No entry for all vehicles (Code sign 9) and is the conventional British No entry silhouette used in Guyana. Sign 29 is captioned No left (or right turns) if sign is reversed: the plate as printed means no left turn; if the sign is reversed, it means no right turn. Sign 39 is NO U-turn. None of these plates grants right of way. Rule 78 says you MUST observe traffic signs.

Why a red circle is not a warning triangle

Learn the silhouette before the picture. Dust, rain, a mango tree, or a bent post on the East Coast can hide the symbol. An upright triangle (apex up) warns. An inverted triangle (apex down) is Give Way. An octagon is STOP. A red circle or red disc prohibits. If you mix those four families, you will answer the sitting from the wrong command.

Rule 78 is the obedience sentence: you MUST observe speed limits, traffic signs and signals, and the directions of Police controlling traffic, and stop when required by Police in uniform. A prohibitory disc is not advisory art. Rule 65 puts the same sign duty on a cyclist, including when wheeling the cycle. Regulation 175 of the Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic Regulations, Cap. 51:02, says signs the Commissioner of Police causes or permits for Third Schedule purposes must conform with the diagrams in that Schedule, and that notices may be used in conjunction with a sign to show limitations. If a disc has a small plate under it, read both. Do not assume the Code's illustrated numbers are the same integers as the Third Schedule diagram numbers. Study the names the Road Traffic Code prints.

Rule 76 still sits under every disc: sounding the horn does not give you the right of way and does not remove the duty to take every precaution to avoid an accident. Honking at a No entry or a no-turn plate is not a substitute for obeying it. Rule 80 and rule 81 still forbid reckless or dangerous driving and still require due care, attention, and reasonable consideration. A clear road at 06:00 in New Amsterdam does not cancel a disc.

No entry: empty circle, motor vehicles, white bar, cycles, pedestrians

The international list names five closure and entry plates before the turn bans. Teach the names the booklet prints. Do not collapse them into one imported ISO poster.

Sign 7, Closed to all vehicles. The illustration is an empty red circle. Nothing on wheels — motor car, hire car, motorcycle, pedal cycle, animal-drawn cart — is invited through. A rebuilt Georgetown lane, a promenade, or a closed bridge approach can wear this family. The plate is not STOP (wrong shape). It is not a warning that the road merely narrows (that is an upright triangle, sign 21).

Sign 8, No entry for all motor vehicles. The circle shows a motor car over a motorcycle. Pedal cycles and pedestrians are not the named subjects of this plate. A motor car, hire car, minibus, motorcycle, or lorry must not enter. Do not treat sign 8 as permission for a learner in a motor car to follow a bicycle through.

Sign 9, No entry for all vehicles. This is the plate the conventional British page and the international list both care about: a red disc with a white horizontal bar. That silhouette is Guyana's do not enter this road disc. You must not drive into the road or opening the disc faces. Typical uses: the wrong end of a one-way street, a slip that is an exit only, a car-park mouth that is not an entrance. The British plate page also prints a red disc labelled NO ENTRY. Same duty, two printings. Do not treat the white bar as STOP. Do not roll past it because the one-way looks empty. Do not reverse into it from a minor road (rule 87 already says do not reverse from a minor or access road into a main road).

Sign 10, No entry for pedal cycles. A bicycle in a red circle. Cyclists must not enter. Motor vehicles are not the named subject, but a cycle still has rule 65.

Sign 11, Closed to pedestrians. A pedestrian in a red circle. Foot passengers must not use that way. Drivers still watch for the pedestrian who ignores the plate (rule 20).

The British page also shows ONE WAY STREET with an arrow. That is the information cousin of No entry at the other end: you may travel only in the arrow's direction. In left-hand traffic, you still keep left on a one-way street unless you are positioning to turn right, in which case rule 46 puts you on the right side of that one-way street before you turn.

Sign 29: no left, or no right if the sign is reversed

This is the plate the Guyana booklet itself flags as a reverse-meaning problem. The circular illustration (sign 29) shows a turning arrow with a red diagonal bar. The April 2025 caption is not a Vienna Convention title. It is:

No left (or right turns) if sign is reversed.

For this sitting, that sentence is the meaning of the plate:

• As the Code prints the plate, the command is no left turn.
• If the sign is reversed — the arrow mirrored to the other hand — the command is no right turn.

Do not grade the arrow by another country's ISO poster and then reject the Guyana caption. Do not treat sign 29 as NO U-turn (that is sign 39, a U-shaped arrow). Do not treat it as Overtaking prohibited (sign 30, two cars). The booklet tells you, in words, that reversing the sign switches a left prohibition for a right prohibition. Learn that switch.

Why the left/right distinction matters in Guyana: this is left-hand traffic (rule 22). A left turn is the near-side turn. 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. A no-left plate removes that near-side turn at that junction or opening — you continue ahead or take a permitted right, as the layout allows, but you do not take the left. A right turn is the off-side turn across the opposing stream. Rules 46 and 47: well before you turn right, account for following traffic, signal, take a position just left of the middle (or on the right of a one-way street), wait for a safe gap, be particularly careful when turning right across oncoming traffic, and give way to it. A no-right plate — the reversed sign 29, or the British rectangular NO RIGHT TURN on the conventional page — removes that off-side turn.

The British NO RIGHT TURN rectangle is worded. It does not use the reversed-arrow trick. If the electronic item shows the words NO RIGHT TURN, obey the words. If it shows the circular turning-arrow family, obey the Code caption about reversing the sign.

A no-turn plate is not cancelled by a green circular traffic light that would otherwise let you proceed (Chapter 9). A green arrow permits only the arrow's direction even if the circular signal would require a stop; a circular green still requires due regard to others and does not authorise a movement a prohibitory plate has taken away. A passenger waving you into the banned turn is an unauthorised person (rule 45): do not rely on signals to go ahead given by unauthorised persons.

Sign 39: NO U-turn

Sign 39 is NO U-turn. The illustration is a circular plate with a U-shaped arrow and a red diagonal. The typeset caption line on the Code's list page sits beside the words Overtake with Caution because sign 40 is the next plate. The U-turn disc is not a caution to overtake. Do not merge 39 and 40.

A U-turn reverses your direction of travel. In left-hand traffic it usually sweeps across the off side — a 180-degree relative of the right turn — into the stream that was behind you. Where the plate faces you, you must not make that reversal: not in a Georgetown one-way, not on a two-way East Coast stretch in the face of oncoming minibuses, not on the Demerara Harbour Bridge or Canje Bridge approach because the carriageway looks empty. The plate does not grant a U-turn to motor cars and ban only lorries. It does not become optional after dark. It is not cancelled by sounding the horn.

The Code's numbered list 1 to 40 does not print a separate end-of-no-U-turn disc. Do not invent one. Obey the plate at the place it faces you. Place-rules for parking and stopping belong to Chapter 14; this section only needs the entry and turn discs.

Entry and turn plates for the sitting

Typical Guyana mistakes: treating the white-bar disc as STOP and rolling the last metre; treating sign 29 as a Vienna arrow-direction and ignoring the Code's reversed caption; treating the U-turn disc as Overtake with Caution; entering a one-way from the British NO ENTRY end because a vendor waved. Master the language of the road, as the Code says after the plates. A red disc tells you what you must not do. It never tells you that you now own the junction.