Pedestrian Island sign

Found at wide intersections and multi lane arterial crossings where a marked median refuge has been built into the crosswalk itself.

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

Drivers often treat the island as empty space and drift toward it, but a pedestrian standing there still has to be given room and often still has the right of way to finish crossing. This sign gets tested alongside pedestrian crossing questions to check that you remember the crossing is not finished just because someone reached the middle.

The sign people confuse it with

Pedestrian Island gets mixed up with Pedestrian Crossing 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.

Pedestrian IslandA raised island in the middle of the crossing lets pedestrians cross one direction of traffic at a time and wait safely in the middle

Pedestrian CrossingPeople on foot cross the road here

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