Road Signs Trivia
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98 free Road Signs trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The first stop sign was a piece of plywood with its corners sawn off by a Detroit police sergeant in 1914. The first traffic light was gas-lit, stood outside the Houses of Parliament, and blew up. The cow on Britain's farm-animal warning sign was a real animal called Patience. Road signs are full of this kind of thing, because every shape and colour was argued over by a committee somewhere. This quiz covers the whole roadside: the 1968 Vienna Convention and the American MUTCD, the stop signs that say ALTO, PARE, DUR and nothing at all, the yield sign's keystone origins in Tulsa, the Worboys and Anderson committees that rebuilt Britain's signs, the typefaces drivers read at speed, cat's eyes, zebra crossings, Botts' dots, traffic lights called robots, the Autobahn's advisory limit and the Route 66 shields people keep stealing. Fifty questions, four options each, with a short explanation after every answer. Play on your phone or print it for a pub quiz.
30 of 98 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which US city did police sergeant Harry Jackson create the first stop sign in 1914?
Detroit
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.
Q 02In the 1920s US plan that ranked road sign shapes by danger, which shape marked the gravest hazard, railroad crossings?
A circle
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.
Q 03Why did Colorado replace its Mile 420 marker on Interstate 70 with a sign reading 419.99?
Thieves kept stealing it
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.
Q 04Why were US stop signs yellow, not red, until 1954?
Red paint faded
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.
Q 05What shape is Japan's stop sign?
An inverted red triangle
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.
Q 06Instead of a word, what appears on Israel's stop sign?
A palm-forward hand
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.
Q 07In Mexico, the red octagon sign at a junction carries which word?
ALTO
ALTO, Spanish for halt, fills Mexico's red octagon, while drivers in Spanish-speaking South America and Brazil are told PARE instead.
Q 08Since 1987, Quebec's red octagon road signs have favoured which word?
ARRÊT
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.
Q 09Stop signs in which country carry the word DUR instead of STOP?
Turkey
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.
Q 10Betty Willis never copyrighted her 1959 roadside welcome sign, calling it her gift to which city?
Las Vegas
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.
Q 11The 1942 wartime edition of the US road sign manual set out special devices for which condition?
Blackouts
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.
Q 12Japan calls its go light 'blue', so what did a 1973 order demand of the lamps?
The bluest green allowed
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.
Q 13On European roads, round signs telling drivers what they must do are which colour?
Blue
Q 21Whose 1963 report gave Britain the road sign system it still uses today?
Worboys
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.
Q 22Britain's motorway sign designer won the job after designing what for a shipping line?
Luggage labels
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.
Q 23Which two designers created Britain's Transport road-sign typeface?
Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert
Blue circles mostly give a positive instruction, while circles ringed in red mostly forbid something, so colour separates the dos from the don'ts.
Q 14On British roads, what does a white circle crossed by a single black diagonal stripe tell drivers?
National speed limit applies
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.
Q 15In the United States, standard warning signs are what colour and shape?
Black on yellow diamonds
Black on yellow diamonds warn of lasting hazards, but inside roadworks the US manual keeps the diamond and swaps the yellow for orange.
Q 16Which country uses US-style warning signs, diverging from the rest of Europe?
Ireland
Ireland adopted the design in 1956 because it followed United Nations recommendations for one uniform international system of road signs.
Q 17Warning signs at the edge of Longyearbyen, the main town of Svalbard, picture which animal?
A polar bear
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.
Q 18Tulsa policeman Clinton Riggs designed which US road sign in 1950?
Yield
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.
Q 19A traffic light in Syracuse, New York, has hung upside down since the 1920s to please which community?
Irish
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.
Q 20The hat-wearing Ampelmännchen on Berlin's pedestrian crossing lights was created in 1961 for which country?
East Germany
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.
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.
Q 24Britain's first motorway, where the new road signs were tried out, bypassed which town?
Preston
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.
Q 25Patience, a real Warwickshire farm animal, was the model for the British road sign warning of what?
Cattle
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.
Q 26The designer who drew the girl on Britain's 'children crossing' road sign said she modelled her on whom?
Herself
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.
Q 27What colour scheme do UK motorway direction signs use?
White on blue
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.
Q 28On the green signs of Britain's primary routes, the route numbers are printed in which colour?
Yellow
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.
Q 29UK direction signs for tourist attractions use which colours?
White on brown
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.
Q 30Britain's 'toucan' crossings let which road users ride across alongside pedestrians?
Cyclists
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.