Street signs and traffic notices

Most road signs in France and Quebec use international (UN) symbols, but the text labels are in French and worth recognising on sight:

• Sens unique — One way.

• Sens interdit — No entry (matches the red-circle white-bar symbol).

• Stationnement interdit — No parking.

• Stationnement payant — Paid parking.

• Cédez le passage — Yield / give way (matches the inverted-triangle symbol).

• Priorité à droite — Yield to traffic on the right (a French intersection rule that catches foreign drivers off-guard: at an unmarked intersection, cars coming from your right have priority).

• Travaux — Roadworks.

• Déviation — Detour.

• Ralentir — Slow down.

• Piétons — Pedestrians.

• Passage piéton — Pedestrian crossing.

• Voie sans issue / Impasse — Dead end / cul-de-sac.

• Zone bleue — Time-limited parking zone (you display a disc showing your arrival time).

• Centre-ville — Town centre (the direction signs point you to).

• Toutes directions — All directions (use this when you don't recognise the specific town named on the other signs).

In Quebec, signs are bilingual on highways but often French-only in older neighbourhoods. Arrêt (instead of STOP) is the Quebec-specific octagon — North America's only French stop sign.