98 Fun Facts About Road Signs

In which US city did police sergeant Harry Jackson create the first stop sign in 1914?

Detroit police sergeant Harry Jackson cut the corners off a square board in 1914 so drivers would know the shape at a glance, then painted STOP on it.

In the 1920s US plan that ranked road sign shapes by danger, which shape marked the gravest hazard, railroad crossings?

A circle marked railroad crossings, judged the gravest danger, with the octagon next for stops, so drivers could read a sign by its outline when the letters were unlit.

Why did Colorado replace its Mile 420 marker on Interstate 70 with a sign reading 419.99?

Thieves kept stealing it because 420 is slang for cannabis, so Colorado posted Mile 419.99 instead, and Idaho later swapped its own marker for 419.9.

Why were US stop signs yellow, not red, until 1954?

Red paint faded on exposure, largely why a 1920s plan put STOP on yellow; fade-resistant finishes let the manual turn it red in 1954.

What shape is Japan's stop sign?

An inverted red triangle replaced a Western-style sign in 1963, just before the Tokyo Olympics, and the English word STOP joined the Japanese from 2017 ahead of the next Tokyo Games.

Instead of a word, what appears on Israel's stop sign?

A palm-forward hand stands in for the word, sparing Israel a stop sign spelled out in Hebrew, Arabic and English like the rest of its road signs.

In Mexico, the red octagon sign at a junction carries which word?

ALTO, Spanish for halt, fills Mexico's red octagon, while drivers in Spanish-speaking South America and Brazil are told PARE instead.

Since 1987, Quebec's red octagon road signs have favoured which word?

ARRÊT stood alone after Quebec ordered the English word off its two-language signs by the end of 1987, yet the red octagons of Paris say STOP.

Stop signs in which country carry the word DUR instead of STOP?

Turkey prints DUR, its own word for stop, on the red octagon, while France and most of Europe settled on the English STOP whatever the local language.

Betty Willis never copyrighted her 1959 roadside welcome sign, calling it her gift to which city?

Las Vegas got the design for free, so the 'Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas' sign belongs to nobody and turns up on souvenirs of every kind.

The 1942 wartime edition of the US road sign manual set out special devices for which condition?

Blackouts made ordinary signs all but useless under dimmed headlamps, so the wartime manual had road markings, studded with reflective glass beads, take over the job of many signs.

Japan calls its go light 'blue', so what did a 1973 order demand of the lamps?

The bluest green allowed was the compromise: Japan's old word ao covered both colours and the go light kept the name, so the lamps were nudged to match it.

On European roads, round signs telling drivers what they must do are which colour?

Blue circles mostly give a positive instruction, while circles ringed in red mostly forbid something, so colour separates the dos from the don'ts.

On British roads, what does a white circle crossed by a single black diagonal stripe tell drivers?

National speed limit applies, and the sign shows no number because the limit depends on the road: 60 mph for a car on a single carriageway but 70 mph on a motorway.

In the United States, standard warning signs are what colour and shape?

Black on yellow diamonds warn of lasting hazards, but inside roadworks the US manual keeps the diamond and swaps the yellow for orange.

Which country uses US-style warning signs, diverging from the rest of Europe?

Ireland adopted the design in 1956 because it followed United Nations recommendations for one uniform international system of road signs.

Warning signs at the edge of Longyearbyen, the main town of Svalbard, picture which animal?

A polar bear marks the town limits, and visitors are told not to walk beyond the signs without a rifle, since bears can appear anywhere on the islands at any time of year.

Tulsa policeman Clinton Riggs designed which US road sign in 1950?

Yield was his answer to crashes caused by confusion over right of way, and the keystone-shaped sign worked so well that other cities were soon asking for their own.

A traffic light in Syracuse, New York, has hung upside down since the 1920s to please which community?

Irish youths on Tipperary Hill kept breaking the light because 'British' red sat above 'Irish' green, until the city gave in and hung it green side up.

The hat-wearing Ampelmännchen on Berlin's pedestrian crossing lights was created in 1961 for which country?

East Germany's little traffic-light man was due to give way to the western figure after reunification, until a campaign by his fans saved him and made him a Berlin souvenir staple.

Whose 1963 report gave Britain the road sign system it still uses today?

Worboys chaired the committee whose report put symbols in place of words on British signs, and the new rules took force on 1 January 1965.

Britain's motorway sign designer won the job after designing what for a shipping line?

Luggage labels for the P&O shipping line were the job, and its chairman, who went on to chair the motorway signs committee, brought the same designer in to do the signs.

Which two designers created Britain's Transport road-sign typeface?

Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert mixed capitals with small letters because a word's shape reads faster from a distance, a choice that upset traditionalists used to signs in capitals.

Britain's first motorway, where the new road signs were tried out, bypassed which town?

Preston got the bypass in 1958, now part of the M6, after the designers had tested their signs by propping them against trees in Hyde Park.

Patience, a real Warwickshire farm animal, was the model for the British road sign warning of what?

Cattle signs carry the outline of Patience, a cow on the farm of the designer's relatives; the same designer's roadworks digger is so often taken for a man fighting an umbrella that she wishes she had drawn more spade.

The designer who drew the girl on Britain's 'children crossing' road sign said she modelled her on whom?

Herself as a child was the model, replacing an older sign's boy in a school cap, a figure she thought looked like an illustration from Enid Blyton.

What colour scheme do UK motorway direction signs use?

White on blue means motorway, green backgrounds mean a primary route and white ones a lesser road, so a sign's colour tells drivers what class of road lies ahead.

On the green signs of Britain's primary routes, the route numbers are printed in which colour?

Yellow picks out the road numbers from the white place names because, as the signs' designer put it, the colours were all chosen to be the most noticeable from a distance.

UK direction signs for tourist attractions use which colours?

White on brown signs are paid for by the attraction itself, not the taxpayer, and a set for a motorway or trunk road can run to many thousands of pounds.

Britain's 'toucan' crossings let which road users ride across alongside pedestrians?

Cyclists may ride across a toucan crossing, but at a zebra, pelican or puffin the Highway Code tells them to get off and wheel the bike over.

Why does no American highway shield carry the number Interstate 50?

An older US route already used it: Interstate 50 would have crossed the same states as US Route 50, and planners feared drivers told to take Route 50 would follow the wrong road.

How was the design of the Interstate highway shield chosen in 1957?

A contest among the states drew dozens of designs and Texas's entry won; the highway officials later registered the shield as a trademark, so nobody else may copy it.

The world's first traffic lights were installed in December 1868 outside which building?

The Houses of Parliament got a gas-lit signal worked by a policeman, but within weeks a leaking main made it explode in his face, and the experiment was dropped.

John Peake Knight took London's 1868 traffic signal from his day job in which industry?

Railways used semaphore arms by day and red and green lamps by night, and Knight, a railway manager, simply set the same signals over a busy London junction.

Lester Wire's handmade 1912 traffic light in Salt Lake City was mocked for looking like what?

A birdhouse is what passers-by saw in the wooden box on its pole, and the joke came true when the retired signal ended up housing birds at the city's aviary before it vanished.

What did William Potts add to traffic signals in 1920?

An amber light joined the red and green that earlier signals made do with, so drivers at his four-way signal tower got fair warning before the change.

In South Africa, traffic lights are commonly called what?

Robots was once a British word for automatic traffic lights too, but it died out in England and lived on in South Africa, where drivers still wait at the robot.

Yorkshireman Percy Shaw made his fortune from which road safety invention of 1934?

Cat's eyes, by the best-known account, came to him on a foggy night drive when a cat's eyes shone back in his headlamps and showed him where the road was.

Slough, west of London, got the world's first pedestrian crossing of which kind in 1951?

Zebra stripes went down in Slough because the metal studs that marked earlier crossings were easy for drivers to miss, and the pattern was picked after trials of other markings.

The flashing amber globes on poles beside British pedestrian crossings are named after which Minister of Transport?

Leslie Hore-Belisha also brought in the driving test and the 30 mph limit in towns as Minister of Transport in the 1930s, yet it is the orange globes that carry his name.

Why are Botts' dots lane markers rare in colder states?

Snowploughs scrape them off along with the snow, which is why California's 1966 law ordering the dots onto its freeways covered only the routes that stay free of snow.

Rome's 'golden' marker of the empire's centre inspired which monument in Washington, D.C.?

The Zero Milestone was meant to be the point from which every American road distance was measured, and the Army's 1919 coast-to-coast truck convoy set off from the spot.

On Germany's Autobahn, what is the 130 km/h 'Richtgeschwindigkeit'?

A recommended speed is all it is, so nobody is fined for passing it, but a driver who crashes while going faster can be made to share the blame and the bill.

Which US highway was dropped from the official route system in 1985?

Route 66 lost its last stretch in 1984, when Interstate 40 bypassed Williams, Arizona, and the famous number was officially retired the following year.

Victorian clubs put up some of Britain's first hazard warning signs for users of what?

High-wheel bicycles had primitive brakes, so Britain's cycling clubs shared the cost of boards that told riders 'this hill is dangerous' before a steep descent.

Which organisation erected the first US road signs, starting in 1906?

In 1914 its clubs planted more than 4,000 wooden signs between Los Angeles and Kansas City alone.

A 1686 royal sign on a Lisbon street wall orders coach drivers to do what?

Back up was the king's order to coaches and litters arriving from one end of the street, which was too narrow for two to pass, and the carved stone is still in place in Alfama.

British road signs give distances in which units?

Miles and yards survive on the signs although Britain sells its petrol by the litre, and a plan to turn speed limits metric in 1973 was shelved three years before it was due.

Which men's grooming brand lined American highways with rhyming verses split across rows of small signs?

Burma-Shave signs came down in 1963, after the company was sold to Philip Morris. At its peak the brand was the second-best-selling brushless shaving cream in the US.

On many American streets, a blue reflective marker in the roadway shows emergency crews the location of what?

A fire hydrant sits at the kerb beside each blue marker, which is placed off-centre toward the hydrant's side of the road so that crews know which way to look.

Which roadwork marker did Los Angeles street painter Charles Scanlon invent to replace easily broken wooden barriers?

The traffic cone won Scanlon a patent in 1943. He made it of rubber so that it would spring back upright after a glancing blow from a passing car.

Which country replaced about 350,000 road signs when it switched to driving on the right on 'Dagen H'?

Sweden made the change on 3 September 1967, even though 83 percent of voters had chosen to keep driving on the left in a 1955 referendum.

Which emergency led the United States to cap highway speeds at 55 mph nationwide in 1974?

An oil crisis set off by the 1973 OPEC embargo prompted the cap, which was meant to save fuel. The federal limit was not fully repealed until 1995.

Michigan road official Edward Hines got the idea for painted centre lines after watching a leaking wagon of what?

Milk dribbling from the wagon left a white trail down the street, and in 1911 Hines copied it in paint on River Road in Trenton, in Wayne County.

Which American city has banned right turns at red lights, unless a sign allows one, ever since the 1970s?

New York City kept its ban when the rest of the state legalised the move in 1977. Drivers there may turn on red only where a sign permits it, mostly in suburban Staten Island.

Which president's wife championed the 1965 Highway Beautification Act, which limited billboards along major US roads?

Lady Bird Johnson pushed the law so hard that it was nicknamed 'Lady Bird's Bill'. It also required junkyards beside major highways to be removed or screened from view.

On the US Interstate network, main routes with odd numbers such as I-5 and I-95 run in which direction?

North–south routes take odd numbers, which climb from the West Coast to the East Coast. Even numbers go to east–west routes and climb from the southern states to the northern ones.

Which tiny additive is mixed into road-marking paint so that lane lines show up in headlights at night?

Glass beads are retroreflective: each one sends a headlight's beam back toward the car it came from, so the painted line glows for that driver.

Which state had no numeric daytime speed limit in the late 1990s, asking only for 'reasonable and prudent' driving?

Montana lost the rule in 1999, when its Supreme Court threw out 'reasonable and prudent' as unconstitutionally vague. Lawmakers then set a daytime limit of 75 mph.

Which inventor of an early smoke hood sold his 1923 traffic signal design to General Electric for $40,000?

Garrett Morgan designed the signal after witnessing a bad crash at an intersection. His smoke hood had already been used in a 1916 rescue from a tunnel beneath Lake Erie.

Which road safety feature, sometimes called sleeper lines, was first used on the Garden State Parkway in 1952?

Rumble strips send a vibration and a loud hum through the wheels when an inattentive driver drifts onto them. Some are also laid across a lane to warn of a stop or a toll plaza ahead.

Runaway truck ramps beside steep American highways often use a deep bed of what to stop a brakeless vehicle?

Loose gravel or sand drags at the wheels, so the vehicle sheds its speed gradually instead of in a crash. Some ramps also run uphill, so that gravity adds to the braking.

Why do American road signs warn that a bridge 'ices before road' in freezing weather?

Cold air flows beneath it as well as over it, so a bridge deck loses heat from both sides. Its surface can freeze while the road on solid ground is still only wet.

A flagger at an American roadworks site holds a paddle with STOP on one face and which word on the other?

SLOW is lettered in black on an orange face, back to back with a red STOP. The national sign manual prefers the paddle to a red flag because drivers read it more reliably.

When an American traffic signal is mounted sideways rather than upright, where does the red light sit?

Far left is the required place for red on a sideways signal, just as red always sits on top of an upright one. A fixed order lets drivers read a signal by position as well as by colour.

Which Lone Star State slogan began in the 1980s as a state campaign against litter on the highways?

Don't Mess with Texas was written for the state highway department, which was spending about $20 million a year picking up litter. The first television advert starred Stevie Ray Vaughan.

On American freeways, lane markers that look clear in normal traffic but glow red warn a driver of what?

Driving the wrong way is the only time anyone sees the red face of these two-sided reflectors, so most motorists never learn that they exist.

At an American junction where every approach has a stop sign, which two-word plaque hangs beneath each sign?

ALL WAY is the only wording the national sign manual accepts, so plaques reading 4-WAY or 3-WAY are no longer allowed. It may be used only where every approach has to stop.

Where DEAD END marks a single street, which two-word American sign marks a whole neighbourhood with one way in or out?

NO OUTLET covers a network of streets that drivers can circulate in but cannot drive through, while DEAD END is kept for a lone street or cul-de-sac.

Which pair of letters is painted on American roads either side of a large X on the approach to train tracks?

RR stands for railroad. The national sign manual requires the marking on paved roads ahead of a crossing, along with a no-passing zone where the road has two lanes.

Between American traffic lanes heading the same way, which marking means that changing lanes is prohibited outright?

A double solid white line forbids crossing, whereas one solid line merely discourages it. In the sign manual's code, doubling any line signals a maximum restriction.

On American roads, a centre lane edged on each side by one solid and one broken line is reserved for what?

Left turns from either direction share the lane, so it is not for through travel. The broken line of each pair sits on the inside, showing that drivers going both ways may enter.

Above the lanes of an American tunnel or reversible highway, which lit symbol means a lane is closed to you?

A red X means drivers may not use the lane beneath it, while a green arrow pointing down means they may. A steady yellow X warns that the lane is about to close.

On American freeway signs, the exit-number tab normally sits top right; what does a tab on the other side signal?

A left-hand off-ramp is something drivers do not expect and may struggle to reach, so the tab moves to that side and gains the word LEFT on a contrasting panel.

Mile markers on an American Interstate count upward from a state's southern border or from which other border?

Western and southern state lines are where the count starts, so the numbers rise as a driver heads east or north. Most states also number each exit after the nearest marker.

Which state won a federal waiver from numbering its freeway exits and only began adding the numbers in 2002?

California argued that most of its freeways were already built, which made new signs too costly. Its Cal-NExUS programme adds the numbers mainly as old signs come due for replacement.

Which desert state's Interstate 19 is signed in kilometres, a leftover of the 1970s American push to go metric?

Arizona put up metric distance signs when the road was built and has kept them, which makes the route unique among Interstates. Its speed limits are still posted in miles per hour.

Which Midwestern state signs its secondary 'supplemental' highways with letters such as Route B and Route FF?

Missouri took on these rural roads in 1952, aiming to bring a state-maintained road within two miles of more than 95 percent of its farmhouses, schools and churches.

On the road signs of rural Texas, what do the letters FM in a route name such as FM 218 stand for?

Farm to Market roads were laid out to link farms and ranches with market towns. Texas keeps by far the best-known network of them and signs some as RM, for Ranch to Market.

Which state gave its name to a nickname for the jughandle, where drivers exit right in order to turn left?

New Jersey has so many that the turn is known as a Jersey left. Signs on its state highways tell drivers ahead of time: 'All turns from right lane'.

Which state's 1982 law, the first of its kind, lets people on bikes roll through a stop sign after slowing down?

Idaho stood alone for 35 years: no other state copied the 'Idaho stop' until Delaware passed a limited version of it in 2017.

Which New England state set the first American speed limit for cars in 1901, at 12 mph in cities?

Connecticut allowed 15 mph on country roads. The idea spread quickly, and by 1930 all but 12 states had put a number on how fast a car could go.

Which road-sign typeface, a rival to Highway Gothic, lost federal approval in 2016 and regained it by order of Congress?

Clearview has larger openings inside letters such as 'e' and 'a', because the cramped ones in Highway Gothic blurred when headlights lit up a sign at night.

What nickname, coined in San Francisco in 2004, describes a road marking of a bike symbol beneath two chevrons?

A sharrow blends the words 'share' and 'arrow'. It marks a lane that cars and bikes share, and shows people cycling where in that lane they are best placed.

Which South Dakota store became famous for its roadside signs, which began by offering travellers free ice water?

Wall Drug was struggling until Dorothy Hustead suggested the offer, aimed at thirsty drivers bound for the newly opened Mount Rushmore. The store still hands out free ice water.

Which North Carolina city's 'Can Opener' rail bridge kept peeling the roofs off trucks despite its warning signs?

Durham's bridge was finally raised by 8 inches in 2019, to 12 feet 4 inches, though that is still well below the 14-foot minimum set for newer bridges.

At a 'Barnes Dance' junction, named for engineer Henry Barnes, all vehicles stop so that pedestrians can do what?

Pedestrians can cross diagonally, or in any other direction, while every vehicle waits. Barnes championed the idea after seeing how hard his daughter found the walk to school.

Which desert city installed the first HAWK beacon, a crossing signal that stays dark until a pedestrian activates it?

Tucson traffic official R. B. Nassi built it in 2000 after seeing a pelican crossing in Bristol, England. His wife came up with the name HAWK.

Which 1968 treaty, named after the European city where it was signed, set a shared standard for road signs?

The Vienna Convention covers signs, signals and road markings alike. American signs follow a separate federal manual, which leans more on words than on pictograms.

Which country changed every speed limit sign to kilometres per hour over the Labour Day weekend of 1977?

Canada made the switch in one weekend under a 1972 agreement among its provinces. New cars also had to be fitted with speedometers that read in km/h.

Which Himalayan capital took down its newly installed traffic lights and went back to police directing traffic by hand?

Thimphu, the capital of Bhutan, takes pride in the officers who direct its junctions with dance-like movements of their arms and hands.

Nevada's State Route 375, which passes close to the secretive Area 51 base, has carried which official name since 1996?

Extraterrestrial Highway became the official name after years of UFO reports from travellers on the road. The small town of Rachel, halfway along, caters to alien hunters.

Which English town is home to the 'Magic Roundabout', a 1970s junction made of a ring of five mini-roundabouts?

Swindon took the name from a popular children's television series. In 2009 the junction was voted the fourth-scariest in Britain.

Which small mammal is pictured on the British road sign that warns drivers of small wild animals crossing?

A hedgehog has appeared on the sign since 2019. A later redesign added white quills to its back so that drivers could make out the animal from farther away.

Britain's road crossings for horse riders, with a push button two metres up, are named after which mythical creature?

Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek myth, gives the crossing its name. Riders can press the high button without dismounting, and the signal shows a horse in place of the usual green man.

Which old American grade-crossing signal, named for its motion, swung a red disc like a pendulum as a gong sounded?

A wigwag copied the watchman who once swung a red lantern from side to side at crossings. Albert Hunt, an engineer with the Pacific Electric streetcar line, invented it in 1909.

Which New England state outlawed roadside billboards in 1968, long before neighbouring Maine followed in 1977?

Vermont is one of only four states with a ban. Hawaii's dates from 1927, and Alaska's took effect on the day it became a state in 1959.

Which volunteer litter programme, with each group named on a roadside sign, began near Tyler, Texas, in 1985?

Adopt-a-Highway began when the Tyler Civitan Club took on two miles of U.S. Route 69. The idea has since spread to 49 states and to several other countries.