Vermont Road Signs and Their Meanings

Vermont's Department of Motor Vehicles sits inside the Agency of Transportation, and its driver's manual prints the whole chain of command on the cover: Phil Scott as Governor, Joe Flynn as Secretary of Transportation, Andrew Collier as Commissioner of Motor Vehicles. Before the book describes any test it asks why the state gives them, and the first item on that list is about signs — "Can you read and understand the road signs and lights used on the road?" — printed ahead of knowing the laws and ahead of seeing well enough to drive. Then the examination arrives as a numbered sequence of three. Vision screening is first, the road test is third, and the second is the one this page is about, sized by Vermont in plain language: "The knowledge test is online and has 20 questions. Each question has four answers to choose from, of which only one is correct. You must answer at least 16 questions correctly to pass the test." Four wrong answers is the entire allowance. No clock is attached to any of it, there or anywhere else the DMV publishes. The word carrying the most weight there is "online," and Vermont means it literally: the front matter of the same manual says the permit test "is no longer taken in our office. It is an online test available on our website, mydmv.vermont.gov."

Nothing Vermont publishes cuts those twenty questions into parts, so there is no sign section to clear on its own — no minimum number of signs to name, no separate score, nothing that isolates the sign pages from the rest of the sitting. What Vermont does publish is a rule about how a sign is supposed to be read, and it is written for the weather. "You can tell what road signs mean by the shape and color as well as the wording. If the sign is covered by dirt, snow, or anything else, you should know the general meaning (regulatory, warning, information) of the sign by its shape." That is not a decorative sentence in a state where a sign can spend weeks with snow packed across its face. It sets a bar higher than reading: the outline alone has to put a sign into one of three families before a single word is legible, and the manual names those families in that order — regulatory, warning, information. The very first question in Vermont's published bank tests exactly that, with the wording of an eight-sided sign hidden under snow. As for trying again, Vermont is generous with attempts and strict about the calendar. The manual says that if you fail "you must wait at least one day before taking another one"; the DMV's learner's-permit page repeats the rule almost word for word and then removes any ceiling — "You may take the test as many times as you wish until you pass." The cost sits on the fee page rather than in that sentence. A learner's-permit knowledge test is $39.00, the permit itself another $24.00, and the DMV is blunt about what an extra attempt costs: "You will pay the test fee each time you take the test."

The book is the Vermont Driver's Manual, form VN-007, produced by the DMV and, as its own colophon says, "printed in Vermont." On the page facing the contents sits a warning that now belongs to an earlier era of the exam: THIS MANUAL MAY NOT BE USED DURING THE TEST. Every piece of driving content in the book lives in one chapter, Chapter 7, Driving Safely and Studying for Your Permit. The contents list its subsections in order, from How to Drive Safely and Parking Your Vehicle through Traffic Lights, Road Signs, and Highway Markings, then Road Signs on its own, Sharing the Road, Hazardous Driving Conditions, Interstate Driving, Impaired Driving, Distracted Driving and The Road (Skills) Test. Inside the sign material the running order goes backwards from most manuals. Road Signs comes first with the shapes. Warning Signs comes second, and Vermont's family rule there is one to read twice, because it admits a color other states leave out: warning signs "are usually diamond-shaped and yellow or green." Regulatory Signs comes last and gets two sentences: "Rectangular signs with white backgrounds indicate what things a driver must or must not do. These signs display speed limits, turning and passing laws, and other directions." The DMV also posts the manual as audio, and that listing is the only place the department publicly marks where the sign material starts and stops — the parts are named for the passages they run between, and one of them runs from Road Signs to Common Vehicle-caused Collisions with Bicycles.

One chapter number sits under every sign question on this page: the Vermont Driver's Manual, Chapter Seven, and only then a heading. The chapter number never changes, which is a fact about the book rather than a habit of ours: Chapter Seven is the whole of Vermont's driving content, so a sign citation cannot leave it without leaving the subject. What moves is the heading, and it moves further across that chapter than you would expect. Road Signs takes the largest share, carrying the shapes themselves: the eight-sided outline, the upside-down triangle, the circular sign with a large X and the letters RR, the crossbuck with its tally of tracks mounted underneath, and the triangle with the points cut off that farm vehicles wear on the back. Warning Signs and Regulatory Signs take the two family rules. After that the citations leave the sign subsection altogether while staying inside the chapter — Work Zone Signs, filed under work-zone safety with its orange diamonds and rectangles; School Zones, filed under sharing the road; and Rules of the Road at Railroad Crossings, filed with the laws about gates, stop lines and the placard that carries a number to call. The last heading is the one to notice. Vermont does not explain its wildlife-warning sign under warning signs at all. It explains it under Moose and Deer Safety, a heading of its own, and what it puts there is the reasoning behind the sign rather than the picture of it: the animals are likeliest at dusk, at night and in the early morning; headlights can freeze a deer or send it bolting toward its habitat across the road; they travel in pairs, so expect a second; and moose are taller, darker and far heavier than deer, which means their eyes may never reflect back at you. A citation that sends a reader there is not wandering off. It is going where Vermont keeps the reason.

14 published Vermont road-sign questions, each with an explanation and a citation to the handbook section it came from.

Content reviewed against official driver handbooks · August 12, 2026