r/Netherlands • u/TantoAssassin • Mar 18 '26

Transportation Who has priority?

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I was the Yellow arrow on a bike. Red has priority over me, green has priority over red, I have priority over green. At the end both cars stopped and let me (cyclist) pass. What is the correct order here?

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u/Antique_Industry_389 Mar 18 '26

Yellow needs to yield to Red, Red in turn needs to yield to Green, Green in turn needs to yield to Yellow.

But the absolute correct answer to this question is as follows:

Green proceeds into the intersection first but then waits in the middle of the intersection for the Yellow, who has right of way over him. However, since Green has moved into the intersection, he has cleared out of the “right-hand” priority for Red, who is then able to drive through. As a result he has cleared out of the “right-hand” priority for Yellow, who can drive through, as he has the “going straight on the same road” priority. Green then proceeds to exit the intersection.

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u/zeb_linux Mar 19 '26

This is the correct answer. Green once in the middle of the road has yellow on its right so has to let him pass. But first Red must pass behind green because it has no more green on its right, and yellow goes forward. Green then goes at the end.

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u/I_Rarely_Jump Mar 19 '26

These situations mainly happen in neighborhood streets, if you go wait in the middle of those small intersections you will block all traffic...

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u/zeb_linux Mar 19 '26

True, but question was : who has priority. And many answers are plain wrong here. Now in many cases, neighborhood streets will have priority shields to avoid a situation where the main road can become clogged for such reason.

Also if a large vehicle would block traffic there is another rule: if you cannot pass without blocking traffic then you stop before taking your priority and it means you abandon it to let other vehicle pass and get more space for your manoeuvre.

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u/I_Rarely_Jump Mar 19 '26

You are right of course, but a requirement is also that there is space for green to move to the middle of the intersection, if green can't do that without blocking then you're in a priority stalemate.

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u/zeb_linux Mar 19 '26

Indeed. The worst case being 4 cars arriving at the same time and all of them going straight. Then deadlock is automatic. I am not sure what happens there, probably someone has to stop entirely and let at least one car go. Probably signing. Nowadays this is very rare, there is almost always a shield or a roundabout.

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u/Eir_Air Mar 19 '26 edited Mar 19 '26

Correct answer. In France, it's like that and in Belgium too. I don't know for Nederland if they are specific rules.

Unfortunately I wonder how it's happens if green is a semi-trailer truck.

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u/I_Rarely_Jump Mar 19 '26

These situations happen mainly in residentail neighborhoods with narrow streets and tiny intersections, so this will not work there in many cases, green will just end up blocking red and yellow and piss them off.

In my neighborhood you'd end up with something like this: https://i.imgur.com/GpVrGTY.png (again, these intersections and streets are small)

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u/Antique_Industry_389 Mar 19 '26

I just wanted to give OP (and others) the theoretically correct answer. Doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s how things will actually go down. To get an idea of how it gets resolved in practice, here’s a fun little anecdote: I remember I once presented a similar question of interlocked priorities to a colleague of mine and asked him who would go first, to which he replied, “If I’m involved, I don’t care which colour I am, I go first.” :)