QuestionHi, I'm about to do my driving test in Oakville, ON and was wondering, right before getting on/off the highway, there is a ramp where you can speed up and slow down, and there is usually a yellow-coloured speed limit sign posted for between 30 km/h to 50 km/h. Now the part I'm confused about is, my driving instructor told me not to worry about these signs, that they are only warning signs, and that I can drive at about 80 km/h to keep with the flow of traffic. I'm worried that if I don't follow these posted signs and drive at whatever it says, I will fail my driving test. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
AnswerThe yellow signs are usually considered advisory, but if you go a lot beyond them, you can sometimes incur the wrath of the police or an examiner. At no point should you go over the speed limit for the road you are entering.
Usually those yellow signs are for the curve part of the on-ramp, or the early part. You should attempt to match speed and merge with traffic on the highway as smooth as possible.
of course, you need to make sure you have a spot to go into, since it is YOUR responsibility to make sure you merge safely, it is NOT the responsibility of the cars already on the higway to move out of the way, although it is nice if they do, don't count on it.
The way I teach my son's and others to merge, is to approach the ramp slowly, but not at a crawl, if there is a curve, keep moving but go slow enough that you can safely look at oncoming traffic over your shoulder to find a gap in traffic. Try to NOT stop on the ramp, but if there is no gap, you should slow down and consider stopping before you lose all the ramp and now have no space to speed up.
once you have a gap that you can safely make, speed up to match traffic and merge.
Check with your DMV drivers manual to be sure though.
Don
