11.1 White, Yellow, Broken and Continuous Lines

White, yellow, broken and continuous lines

The Guyana Police Force (GPF) learner package lists the Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic Regulations, Cap. 51:02, regulations 175 to 179, as the markings cluster under Subject 5 (traffic signs, signals and road markings). This OpenExamPrep chapter is independent study of that printed regulation text in the April 2025 Theoretical Programme. It is not a Police booklet, not a claim of official approval, and not a substitute for the three-book package issued from Traffic Headquarters, Eve Leary.

Quick Answer: Surface lines are yellow or white. They may be painted or made of metal or other suitable material. Transverse lines are 5 inches wide. Other lines are not less than 4 nor more than 5 inches. A broken centre line on a road that permits two lanes of traffic may be crossed at the driver’s discretion if later rules allow and it is safe. A continuous centre line is used on two-way roads carrying more than two lanes. Centre lines on two-way roads with single-lane traffic in either direction, and all lane lines, are white. Centre lines on two-way roads with two or more lanes either way are yellow.

Why the surface is marked at all

Regulation 178(1) lists the jobs a line on the carriageway may do:

1. Mark the position beyond which vehicular traffic should not proceed when a Police Constable controlling traffic, a road sign, or light signals require a stop. That family includes the stop line from the Light Signals Regulations: yellow or white, 5 inches, placed transversely.
2. Show the course or direction vehicles are to take.
3. Demarcate lanes.
4. Show the proximity or situation of street refuges and fire hydrants.
5. Mark crossing places for pedestrians.
6. Show parking prohibitions or restrictions, the limits of those areas, and bus stops.

Not every Guyana road carries every mark. A Georgetown one-way street, an East Coast two-lane road, the Soesdyke–Linden Highway, and a country approach to the Canje Bridge can look different on a wet night. The electronic paper still asks the printed rules, not whether your home street has fresh paint this week.

Regulations 175–177 sit in the same booklet cluster. They are mainly about upright signs: the Commissioner of Police may cause or permit signs that conform with the Third Schedule diagrams; notices may add limitations the Commissioner deems appropriate; temporary sites that will carry only one line of traffic may use diagram (22); ordinary sign lettering is black on white except diagrams (17) and (18). Chapter 12 picks up those plates. This section stays on the paint and metal on the road.

Colour and material: yellow or white, paint or metal

Regulation 178(2): the colour of lines and other traffic signs on road surfaces shall be yellow or white. The lines may either be painted or may be made of metal or other suitable material.

Exam swaps to refuse:

• Red centre lines as the Guyana default. Red belongs on prohibitory plates and on some signal faces, not as the regulation 178 surface colour.
• Blue boxes copied from another country’s parking code.
• Black only.
• “Paint only.” The booklet expressly allows metal or other suitable material, the same idea as the Light Signals stop line.

Yellow or white is the pair. Which of those two you meet depends on the lane layout below, not on the parish you are in. A metal stud and a painted dash are both regulation 178 lines if they are yellow or white and used for a listed purpose.

Width: five inches across the path; four to five along it

Regulation 178(3):

• The width of transverse lines on road surfaces shall be 5 inches.
• The width of other lines shall be not less than 4, nor more than 5 inches.

Transverse means across the path of the vehicle: the bar you halt behind at a signal, at a Police stop, or at a STOP place. Other lines are the longitudinal marks — centre lines and lane lines that run with the traffic.

The Light Signals stop line is also five inches and transverse. That is the same family, not a second measurement system. Do not invent 2 inches, 8 inches, or 12 inches. Do not treat a faded East Bank line after rain as a licence to invent a new width; the regulation figure is still 5 across and 4–5 along.

Guyana is left-hand traffic. The transverse bar still sits across your stream. You keep left (near side). The centre line, when there is one, sits toward your right (off side). Width rules do not change because the driver of a typical Guyana car, hire car, or minibus sits on the off side of the cabin.

Broken versus continuous at the centre

Regulation 178(4)(a): a broken line shall be used for the centre lines on roads permitting two lanes of traffic. Subject to later provisions, it may be crossed at the discretion of the driver.

That is the ordinary two-way, one-lane-each-way picture. You keep left under the Road Traffic Code. The broken centre is the place you may cross if you judge it safe — typically to overtake on the right (off side) when the Code also allows overtaking. Discretion is not a blank cheque. Later paragraphs (section 11.2) add continuous yellow no-overtaking rules, yellow-bordered islands, and “only if it is seen to be safe.” Crossing a broken centre into the face of an oncoming minibus on the East Coast, or overtaking at a bend the Code forbids, is not “discretion.”

Regulation 178(4)(b): a continuous line shall be used for the centre lines on two-way roads carrying more than two lanes of traffic.

Once the two-way road has more than two lanes in total, the centre is a continuous line, not the broken two-lane mark. Continuous at the centre is a stronger divide. What you may still do beside a continuous line that has a dotted companion, or a second continuous companion, is regulation 178(5)–(6) (section 11.2). Do not treat (4)(b) as a licence to wander across a multi-lane centre because “I always overtake.”

White versus yellow: count the lanes each way

Regulation 178(4)(c) and (d) are the colour rules most items will swap:

• (c) All centre lines on two-way roads carrying single lane traffic in either direction, and all lane lines, shall be marked in white.
• (d) Centre lines on two-way roads with two or more lanes of traffic either way shall be marked in yellow.

Read that slowly.

• Two-way, one lane each way: the centre is white. Lane lines (the dashes that split parallel streams going the same way) are also white, wherever they appear.
• Two-way, two or more lanes either way: the centre is yellow.

Lane lines stay in the white sentence. The yellow in (d) is the centre of a fatter two-way road, not a rule that every dash on a Georgetown dual carriageway is yellow.

A white centre on a simple two-lane East Bank road is the divide between you (keeping left) and the oncoming stream. A yellow centre on a wider two-way road with two or more lanes each way is still the divide between the two directions; the white lane lines then split the lanes within your direction.

A continuous yellow placed left of the centre as you look in your direction of travel is the no-overtaking / no-stopping device in 178(4)(e) — that is the next section, not a third colour.

Single-lane discipline on white lane lines

Regulation 178(10) belongs with the colour of lane lines even though it is printed later: a vehicle shall be driven as nearly as practicable entirely within a single lane along a roadway divided into two or more lanes by any broken or solid white lines, and shall not cross or straddle those lines unless it is seen by the driver to be safe.

Hold-ups in the Road Traffic Code already say keep in your own lane. Regulation 178(10) puts that on the white lane marks. Weaving a hire car across solid or broken white lane lines in a Georgetown queue, or straddling two lanes on a highway approach, is the behaviour the paragraph shuts down unless a genuine, seen-to-be-safe change of lane is happening. “As nearly as practicable entirely within a single lane” is the test, not a permission to occupy two lanes because the paint is worn.

On named Guyana roads the same paint language applies. A faded line on an East Coast restricted road, a metal stud on a town approach in New Amsterdam or Bartica, a transverse bar at Timehri, or a centre on the Soesdyke–Linden Highway is not a different colour code. Bridges such as the Demerara Harbour Bridge and the Canje Bridge are Code speed-and-care locations; if the carriageway is marked, regulation 178 still supplies the colour and width.

Colour, width and layout table

Independent OpenExamPrep teaching of white, yellow, broken, and continuous lines follows the printed regulation 178(2)–(4) and (10). It does not invent extra colours, and it does not treat a broken two-lane centre as a never-cross barrier or a continuous multi-lane centre as decoration.