Sign colors — Texas Permit Test
Sign colors on the Texas permit test — 5 rules, each with the reason behind it and a question on it while it is fresh.
The rules
A red sign means stop, yield, or do what is posted on the sign.
Red is the color Texas keeps for the things you have no choice about. Every other color is softer than this one.
Red: Stop, yield, or do what is posted on the sign
A yellow sign means a general warning or caution.
Yellow is the color for what might happen rather than what must. It names a hazard rather than a rule.
Yellow: General warning or caution
An orange sign means construction and maintenance warning.
Orange only appears where the road is being worked on. The moment you see it, the layout ahead is temporary.
Orange: Construction and maintenance warning
A green sign indicates movements that are permitted, and gives direction guidance.
Green tells you where the road goes and what you are allowed to do at it. It is the color of the overhead route signs.
Green: Indicated movements permitted, direction guidance
Black and white on a sign both mean regulation.
These are the colors of the rules that are simply stated and simply obeyed, like a posted speed limit.
Black: Regulation
On the test
What does a red traffic sign mean in Texas?
Stop, yield, or do what is posted. Red is the color Texas keeps for the things you have no choice about. Every other color is softer than this one. Texas Driver Handbook, p.26: “Red: Stop, yield, or do what is posted on the sign”
How this works
Most practice tests hand you a bank of questions and leave the manual somewhere else. This one puts them together.
You read one law and the reason behind it, then answer a question on that law while it is still fresh. Get it right and you move on; get it wrong and you have found the gap while it is cheap to fix, not on the morning of the exam.
Learning one rule at a time, and proving it immediately, is what turns a manual you skimmed into something you actually know — and it makes studying feel like getting somewhere rather than like waiting to find out.
What it costs
- One payment, once — not a subscription. Nothing renews and there is nothing to cancel, for an exam you sit one time.
- Free to start: a 10-question test and the first section of cards. No sign-up and no account.
- Paying opens the rest of the cards, unlimited full-length practice tests, and retests built from exactly the questions you got wrong.
- Every level up to Prepared — 3 tests passed in a row.
- Do the work, fail the real exam, and we refund you.
Where these come from
Every rule here is checked against Texas Driver Handbook, published by the Texas Department of Public Safety, and against the state code itself. Last checked 2026-09-16.
- src/assets/drivers-manuals/TX.pdf (Texas Driver Handbook, form DL-7, Revised January 2026, Texas Department of Public Safety, retrieved 2026-09-14 from dps.texas.gov)
- src/assets/drivers-manuals/TX.pages.txt (plain pdftotext over that PDF; sha256 pinned in SOURCES.json)
- src/assets/drivers-manuals/SOURCES.json (sha256, folio offset 6, nonLawPages, the four extraction traps and the extraction flag, each with its measured basis)
- docs/plans/texas-exam-shape.md (the search that established that no official source states the question count, and the two decoys it disposes of)