This road sign

Explanation

It obliges you to give way to the oncoming vehicle in a narrow section.

The sign is round with a red border, a broad black arrow pointing down and a narrow red arrow pointing up: "priority to the oncoming vehicle". The key to reading this sign is colour, not direction: the red arrow is your direction of travel and its being red means it is not your turn; the black arrow is the opposing flow, which has priority. This sign does not merely warn; it creates a duty.

The scene in the photograph is exactly the situation the sign was made for: a narrow bridge on a forest road with a side railing, whose width is not enough for two vehicles to pass at once, and a blue car approaching from the opposite side. Your duty is to hold back before the narrow section and let him through.

The safety reason: in a narrow section there is neither a shoulder nor room to correct a mistake; if both drivers enter, one must reverse on the bridge, usually with a queue of vehicles behind him. Rather than leaving the decision to a moment's negotiation between two drivers, the law assigns priority in advance and definitively.

Worth memorising: this sign has a counterpart; the blue square sign with a large white arrow, which is its opposite and gives priority to you. Find the colour of the arrow relating to yourself: red means wait, white means go.

• The "road narrows" warning is a different sign, triangular with a red border, and it only informs; the sign in this picture is round and, besides informing, creates the duty to give way. • This sign prohibits no passage; it merely fixes the order of passage. A prohibition on passage has its own separate sign.

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