This identification marking is used to identify vehicles:

Explanation

Vehicles driven by deaf or deaf-mute drivers.

The marking in the image is a yellow circle with three black dots arranged in a triangle. This identification mark is fitted to a vehicle whose driver is deaf or deaf-mute and must be visible to other drivers from the front and the rear.

Its safety reason is entirely practical: a large part of everyday traffic warnings are auditory — the horn, the siren of an ambulance or police car, the sound of braking and the sound of a vehicle in your blind spot. A driver bearing this mark hears none of them. When you see this yellow circle on the vehicle ahead or alongside, you must assume that sounding your horn is useless; instead, increase your following distance, signal earlier, use your lights to announce your presence, and never begin a manoeuvre such as overtaking or changing lanes in reliance on the horn. That single change of behaviour closes off crashes of the "I thought he heard me" kind.

Worth memorising is telling this family of identification marks apart by colour and shape: a yellow circle with three dots means the driver cannot hear; the wheelchair symbol means a driver with a disability; a coloured rectangular plate means dangerous goods; and the mark for an inexperienced driver is something else again. The exam constantly substitutes these four for one another.

• The dangerous goods marking is a rectangular plate with a coloured section and a black frame bearing a hazard code, not a yellow circle; the resemblance between yellow and orange is what makes this option tempting. • A vehicle driven by a person with a disability is marked with the wheelchair symbol; plain dots make no reference to physical disability. • An inexperienced driver is identified by a different mark, and its subject is driving experience, not hearing; the two are substituted for one another only because both are yellow.

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