If traffic through the railway crossing is prohibited and there are no traffic lights, road signs and markings, the driver must stop:

Explanation

Not closer than 5 metres from the barrier.

In this case the crossing has a barrier but no light, sign or marking; so your reference for stopping is the barrier itself, and you must stop at least 5 metres short of it. Note that as soon as a barrier exists, the 10-metre distance from the rail is no longer relevant — the barrier is installed ahead of the rail and is your stopping boundary.

See the safety reason for these 5 metres in practice: the barrier arm sweeps an arc as it comes down, and if the bumper or bonnet of a car is beneath it, the arm settles on the car or breaks. More importantly, if a car stops hard against the barrier and a queue forms behind you, you have no room at all to reverse and get out of the danger zone. Five metres is the very margin that gives you an escape.

Worth memorising: at a level crossing, always take your distance from the nearest control element. The order of priority is: a light or a stop sign and marking, then the barrier, and in the absence of all of these, the rail. The figure 5 attaches to the barrier and the figure 10 to the rail; memorise these two pairs together so that you do not swap them in the exam.

• 3 metres is a figure that merely looks "less than 5" and seems plausible, but at that distance neither the space for the barrier arm nor room for the car to manoeuvre is provided, and no such limit exists in the rules. • Stopping right in front of the barrier is tempting because it feels like "standing before the obstacle", but the moving barrier arm and the absence of room to reverse make precisely that prohibited.

Sources and content coverage · Report a content error