Most people who fail the theory test do not fail because they never read the Rules. They fail because a question was worded to catch them, or because two signs look almost the same. This page is about exactly those moments — how to read a tricky question, and how to tell the confusing things apart.
Do these five things in order, on every single question. It costs about ten seconds and it removes most careless mistakes.
The trap almost always sits in the last few words — a negation, a place, or a condition. “What is the maximum speed…” and “What is the maximum speed outside a built-up area…” have completely different answers, and the difference is the last four words.
Before you look at the options, name the word the question turns on: must or may, not or except, at least or no more than. Section 02 lists the ones that catch people most often.
If there is a sign or a scene, work out what it means on its own terms first. Where is the sign standing? Which way do the arrows point? Is there a panel underneath it? A wrong option is written to sound right if you have not looked properly.
Decide your answer before reading the choices. Wrong options are written to be attractive; if you already hold an answer, they cannot pull you off course. If your answer is not on the list, you misread the question — go back to step one.
Cross out every option that breaks a rule you are certain about. Two questionable options are much easier than four. Only then pick.
A handful of words do almost all the damage. Learn to feel them jump off the page.
An order and a suggestion can look almost identical. The blue circle (401) orders you to go straight — there is no other legal choice. The blue square (610) merely recommends that route; turning off is still perfectly legal.
If an option turns a permission into a duty — or a duty into a mere option — it is wrong.
Both point at a number, in opposite directions. Sign 319 sets a floor — you must keep at least that gap. Sign 329 sets a ceiling — you must not exceed it. Numeric questions live on which end of the range is being fixed.
A warning triangle goes no closer than 25 m in town — placing it further away is always legal.
The single most common reason a right answer becomes wrong. These two signs are the switch: speed limits, triangle distances and the definition of limited visibility all change the moment you pass them.
50 km/h in town, 90 km/h outside. Limited visibility: under 50 m in town, under 100 m outside.
Two different legal terms. Stopping is a halt of up to 5 minutes (longer if you are letting passengers in or out, or loading). Parking is any halt longer than that. Banning stopping bans parking too — never the other way round.
332 forbids both. 333 still lets you halt briefly to drop someone off.
“Give way” means do not force anyone to change speed or direction — if the road is clear you may roll straight through. “Stop” means the wheels must actually come to rest, every time.
At 204 a full stop at the line is compulsory even on an empty road at night.
Some numbers in the Rules are advice, not law, and the sign shape tells you which: a red-bordered circle is enforceable, a blue square is guidance. Mixing the two produces a confident wrong answer.
The 2-second following distance is a recommendation; the 1–1.5 m gap past a cyclist is a requirement.You are no longer hunting for the correct statement — you are hunting for the odd one out: the option that is false, or the single case the rule does not cover. Say the question back to yourself in positive form before you look at the options.
“In which case is overtaking not prohibited?” — three of the four options describe places where it is banned.The old exam folklore says “anything with always is wrong”. That is bad advice here — several Lithuanian rules really are absolute. Treat the word as an instruction to hunt for one counter-example. Find one and the option falls; genuinely fail to, and it is probably the answer.
Truly absolute: when reversing, you always give way to pedestrians. Not absolute: “you must always stop at a level crossing”.Lithuanian road signs are not numbered randomly. The first digit tells you the family, and the family tells you what kind of thing the sign does. Learn these eight ranges and you can half-answer any sign question before you have even pictured the sign.
Warns only. Never orders anything, and never decides priority. Adjust your speed and look.
Decides who goes first. Only six in the whole system — learn all six by heart.
Forbids. Something you were allowed to do is banned from here on.
Orders. You must do the thing shown — not merely may.
Starts or ends a regime. Motorway, one-way, built-up area, lane rules, the crossing itself.
Tells you where things are. Directions, distances, place names.
Points to a facility. Fuel, hospital, hotel. Never affects priority or speed.
Modifies the sign above it. Distance, time, vehicle type, direction — never acts alone.
Shape and colour carry the same message twice over, deliberately — so a sign still reads when it is covered in snow, backlit, or seen by a colour-blind driver. That redundancy is a gift in the exam: even an unfamiliar sign tells you its job.
Something is ahead. Nothing is being ordered or forbidden.
Something is banned from here on.
You are being told to do this — it is the only permitted way.
Describes a situation. Rarely a duty in itself.
The only octagonal sign, so it reads by outline alone.
The only inverted-triangle sign in the system.
Crossed through with grey = 202, and your priority has ended.
Blue circle = an order. Blue square = advice. Same colour, opposite weight.
These pairs cause more wrong answers than anything else in the sign section. For each one there is a single detail that settles it — learn the detail, not the picture.
Triangle = it is coming. Blue square = you are at it. The triangle (127) only warns you to slow down. The blue square (533/534) marks the crossing itself — that is where the duty to give way to pedestrians applies. Questions love to show the triangle and ask about giving way.
One crossing, or people everywhere? 127 warns of a marked crossing at a specific point. 128 warns that along this whole stretch people may be walking on or across the carriageway, with no crossing at all — so there is no single place to watch.
One direction, or both? 301 (the white bar on red) bans entry from your side only — traffic legally comes the other way, which is why it usually guards a one-way street. 302 (empty red circle) bans all vehicles in both directions. Getting this backwards is the classic one-way-street mistake.
Two bars beat one. 332 (crossed both ways) bans stopping and parking — you may not halt at all. 333 (single bar) bans only parking, so a brief halt to let a passenger out stays legal. Remember: banning stopping automatically bans parking; the reverse is not true.
Follow the red arrow — red is the one who loses. On 205 the red arrow points your way, so you give way. On 206 the red arrow points against you, so the oncoming driver waits. Both appear at narrow bridges and roadworks, where guessing is expensive.
The short stub is the side road; the long line is you. In both cases you are on the priority road — this is a warning, not a loss of priority. The question is only which side the other traffic will appear from. Same logic for 108, where the side road crosses straight over.
Read the bottom of the sign first. Both are called “winding road”; the difference is only the direction of the first bend — right on 115, left on 116. Same trick separates 113 and 114 (a single bend right or left).
Count the squeezed sides. 123 narrows from both sides, 124 from the right only, 125 from the left only. None of the three tells you who has priority in the narrow section — that needs sign 205 or 206, or the general rules.
Crossed out means it is over. The yellow diamond gives you priority through the intersections ahead; the crossed diamond means that protection has ended and the ordinary rules — including the right-hand rule — take over from here.
Read the slope left to right, like a sentence. Falling away to the right = descent (117); climbing to the right = ascent (118). It matters beyond naming: where these signs are posted and passing is difficult, the driver going downhill gives way (KET 137–139) — a favourite exam question that has nothing to do with naming the sign.
Look at what is pictured inside the circle. An empty circle (302) bans everything. A circle with a car in it (303) bans motor vehicles — bicycles and pedestrians are unaffected. Whenever a restrictive sign contains a pictogram, the ban is limited to what is drawn.
“End of” signs are their own family of traps. Grey diagonal stripes (336) cancel the restrictive signs that came before. But 502, 504 and the built-up area end sign cancel a regime, not a restriction — and the moment a built-up area ends, the speed limit changes with it.
Every “who goes first?” question can be settled by walking down this list and stopping at the first rung that applies. Work strictly top to bottom and you will never talk yourself into the wrong answer.
Beat everything else on this list — lights, signs and markings included. If an officer is directing traffic, nothing else matters.
Where lights control the traffic, priority signs do not apply. The catch: if the lights are off or flashing amber, they are not directing anyone — drop straight to the signs, as if the lights were not there.KET 165–167
Give way (203), Stop (204), Priority road (201) and its end (202). Only six signs, and they settle most exam intersections.KET 155
With no officer, no lights and no signs, the surface itself marks the priority road: asphalt beats gravel or dirt. And if you cannot tell which surface you are on, the Rules settle it for you — behave as though you are on the side road.KET 159–160
Roads of equal rank: give way to whoever comes from your right. This is the bottom rung, not the first thing to reach for — most people apply it too early.KET 155
When priority is otherwise equal, a tram on rails goes first — regardless of which direction it comes from.
Marking questions look fiddly but follow three simple ideas: solid forbids, broken permits, and yellow always overrules white.
Do not cross. The exception worth remembering: a solid line marking the carriageway edge or a parking space may be crossed.
May be crossed from either side. Ordinary lane separation — the default state of the road.
Dashes three times longer than the gaps. A solid line is coming — finish your overtake now. This is the detail exam questions hang on.
Cross from the broken side only. From the solid side, only to finish an overtake already begun.
Yellow governs halting: solid = no stopping and no parking. Where yellow and white disagree, follow the yellow.
No parking — but a brief halt is still allowed. The 1.27 zigzag goes further and bans stopping along the whole line.
Give way here. The painted equivalent of sign 203 — and it turns up in questions where no sign is visible at all.
A channelising island. Driving over it is prohibited outright.
Do not enter unless you can clear it without stopping inside — even on a green light.
Binding, not advisory. A left arrow in the leftmost lane also permits a U-turn — a favourite exam detail.
A small set of figures accounts for a large share of the numeric questions. These are worth knowing without thinking — no derivation, no reasoning.
This sign stands at every border crossing into Lithuania and states the four default limits in one picture. If you can redraw it from memory, you have already answered a large share of the speed questions — the figures below are the same ones, plus the distances that go with them.
Some questions have more than one correct answer. They are marked all-or-nothing: a partially correct answer scores exactly the same as a completely wrong one.
Knowing the material is half of it. The other half is not running out of time or nerve.
Go through the whole test answering only what you know immediately. Momentum matters, and it guarantees every question you actually know gets banked before the clock becomes a problem.
Use the question grid to jump back to what you skipped. Questions often teach each other — a later question can remind you of the rule an earlier one needed.
There is no penalty for a wrong answer, so an unanswered question is a guaranteed zero while a guess is not. Eliminate what you can, then commit.
If you can name the rule that makes your first answer wrong, change it. If it is only a feeling, leave it — second-guessing without a reason turns more right answers into wrong ones than the other way round.
The pass mark here is 80%. Practise until you are scoring in the nineties, so that exam nerves and one unlucky question still leave you comfortably above the line.
One hour a day for a week, in this order. It is built around the one habit that matters most: reviewing your own mistakes rather than re-reading what you already know.
Warning, priority and restrictive signs. Learn the six priority signs by heart — they carry the most weight in the exam.
Mandatory, special regulation, information, service and the additional panels. Then a signs-only test.
Drill the ladder in section 06 until it is automatic. This is the topic that separates a pass from a fail.
The numbers in section 08, learnt in pairs. Overtaking and following distance.
The stopping-versus-parking distinction, the yellow lines, and level crossings.
No new material. Reopen every question you got wrong this week and say out loud why the right answer is right.
Timed, no notes, no pausing. If both are above 90%, you are ready.
Short daily repetition beats one long session. Ten minutes before bed is enough to hold 300 signs.
Nothing here is about traffic rules, and all of it costs people passes.
Reading tactics is easy; using them under a clock is the skill. Take a free test and watch for the trap words.
Take a free testPrepared for learning, based on the Road Traffic Rules of the Republic of Lithuania (2024-02-01) and their annexes. Sign numbers and names follow Annex 1; markings follow Annex 3. The official full text is at e-tar.lt.