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Md. Code, Transportation § 21-205

This is the official text of Md. Code, Transportation § 21-205, part of Maryland’s Code, Transportation — governs vehicles, drivers, and roadways.

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§21–205.

Official statutory text

(a) A person may not place, maintain, or display on or in view of any highway any unauthorized sign, signal, marking, or device that purports to be, is an imitation of, or resembles a traffic control device or a railroad sign or signal.

(b) A person may not place, maintain, or display on or in view of any highway any unauthorized sign, signal, marking, or device that attempts to direct the movement of traffic.

(c) A person may not place, maintain, or display on or in view of any highway any unauthorized sign, signal, marking, or device that hides or interferes with the effectiveness of a traffic control device or a railroad sign or signal.

(d) A person may not place, maintain, or display on or in view of any highway any unauthorized sign, signal, marking, or device that, except as otherwise permitted by law, contains:

(1) Any of the following words: “stop”, “curve”, “warning”, “slow”, “danger”, “listen”, “look”, or “school”; or

(2) Any other word used in directing the movement of traffic.

(e) A person may not place or maintain on any highway nor may any public authority permit on any highway any traffic sign or signal that has any commercial advertising on it.

(f) This section does not prohibit the placement on private property adjacent to a highway of a sign giving useful directional information, if the sign is of a type that cannot be mistaken for an official sign and is placed with the approval of the State Highway Administration.

(g) Each sign, signal, marking, or device prohibited by this section is a public nuisance, and the authority that has jurisdiction over the highway may remove it without notice.

Status: in_force · Read it on the official government site

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About this page: Statute text is reproduced from official government publishers via the Open US Law dataset (Vaquill AI, snapshot v2026.08, CC BY 4.0). Primary legislative text like this is public domain under the government-edicts doctrine (Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). We link every section back to its official source so you can verify it independently.