Bicycle Lane Ahead sign

Placed just before the striping starts on urban and suburban arterial roads where a dedicated bike lane has been added along the shoulder.

How to recognise it

This sign is a diamond stood on its point in fluorescent yellow green, reserved for schools, pedestrians and bicycles. Yellow diamonds telling you what the road is about to do. They are advisory rather than mandatory, but ignoring them is how people end up in ditches and how examiners end up failing you.

What the test wants you to know

Once the lane is painted it is not a suggestion, and turning across it without checking for a cyclist first is one of the most common right hook collisions on city streets. Expect questions that place a car and a bike side by side at an intersection and ask who has to check for whom.

The sign people confuse it with

Bicycle Lane Ahead gets mixed up with Share the Road more than any other pairing in this category. Put them side by side and the difference is obvious, which is exactly why it is worth doing once rather than meeting them cold in the exam.

Bicycle Lane AheadA marked lane reserved for bicycles begins just ahead, running alongside your travel lane

Share the RoadThis plaque is mounted below a bicycle warning sign on a road with no separate bike lane

Practise it

Reading about a sign is not the same as recognising it in half a second with an examiner watching. Every state road signs test on this site shows the sign and asks you to name it, then shows four faces and asks you to pick the right one.

Take a road signs test