The rules that come up.

They apply with no sign posted at all: the place-name board alone imposes 50, and leaving the built-up area brings back 80. A speed disc merely replaces the general limit locally.

Pick a fixed point at the roadside: when the car ahead passes it, you must be able to count two seconds before you reach it. On a wet road go to at least three seconds; in a tunnel and behind a lorry, more still.

Reaction distance is the tens digit of your speed times three; braking distance is that same digit squared. At 50 km/h that gives 15 metres of reaction and 25 of braking — 40 metres in all.

Wherever no sign or marking governs the junction, the vehicle coming from the right goes first — including on a square, in a car park or in a 30 zone. It applies even if the road on the right is narrower or unsurfaced.

Give way to vehicles already on the ring, do not indicate on entry, and do indicate to leave. Inside, do not stop without reason and do not overtake a multi-track vehicle.

A pedestrian on the crossing, or clearly about to step on, has priority; the driver must be able to stop in time and stop if needed. In the five metres before it, stopping is forbidden and so is overtaking.

The general threshold is 0.5 per mille. But drivers on probation, learners, accompanying persons and professional drivers are subject to the ban on driving under the influence, set at 0.1 per mille — a technical figure that amounts to zero.

You need visibility over the whole manoeuvre, room to pull back in without cutting anyone up, and certainty that you hinder no one — ahead or behind. Overtaking on the right is forbidden outside the cases provided for, and must not be confused with parallel queues in dense traffic.

Use the whole acceleration lane to join at the speed of traffic, never forcing your way in: priority belongs to vehicles already on the motorway. U-turns, reversing and stopping are forbidden, the hard shoulder is not a traffic lane, and in a jam you form a rescue corridor between the two left-hand lanes.

On pedestrian crossings and the five metres before them, in front of entrances, on tram tracks, at blind junctions, in a second row, on cycle tracks: the ban comes from the law, not from a sign. In a blue zone the disc is set to the half hour following your arrival.

Since 2014 every motor vehicle drives with lights on, day and night. Main beam is dipped as soon as it dazzles — notably when meeting or following another vehicle — and rear fog lights are only for very poor visibility.

Belts are compulsory in every seat fitted with them, and the driver answers for underage passengers. Children must travel in a suitable restraint until their twelfth birthday, unless they are at least 150 centimetres tall.

Stop, switch on the hazard lights, place the warning triangle — at least fifty metres on a road, a hundred on a motorway — then alert and help. If anyone is injured the police must be called and nothing moved before they agree; with damage only and the injured party absent, notify them at once, failing which the police.

Your first licence is issued on probation for three years. An offence leading to withdrawal extends the probation by one year; a second one during the extended period annuls the licence, and everything starts again after a waiting period.