The Yellow Kerb, and Marked Crossings

Not every marking is a line down the middle of the road. Some are painted on the kerb itself, and one of those carries more weight than most drivers realise.

The yellow kerb. Where the kerb alongside the road is painted yellow, four things are prohibited at once:

• No overlapping
• No parking
• No waiting
• No stopping

That is a stronger restriction than a No Parking sign, and it works differently in two ways worth noticing.

It is continuous, not local. A sign applies from where it stands; a yellow kerb applies along every metre the paint runs. There is no "just past the sign" where the restriction quietly ends.

It is communicated by the road itself. No post, no plate, nothing to be obscured by a parked lorry or knocked flat by a matatu. The instruction is the surface you are about to stop on — which is exactly why "I did not see a sign" carries no weight against a yellow kerb.

Marked pedestrian crossings work on the same principle: the marking defines an area rather than a point. Where a crossing is painted on the road surface, it establishes a zone in which pedestrians have priority and you are required to slow and stop to let them cross safely. The paint is doing the same job the kerb marking does — binding continuously across a stretch of road rather than at the moment you pass a post.