The hardest part about motoring isn’t the actual driving, it’s the things that you have to do to drive safely. Spotting and understanding road signs is the most difficult thing when you’re moving at 30-50mph; at least for the first year or so. Before you even get to the test, you should be able to recognise about 80% of the road signs and be able to respond to them in the theory test. It will be too late by the time you hit the practical test if you don’t get it right in theory. So we are going to show you a thing or two about road signs to help you learn them.
Colour Coding
Road signs are not there to make things complicated. You only need to pay attention to the ones that concern you. If you look at the Jarvis – WelcomeDriver, 2021 you will learn there are six different colour schemes for signs. Green signs are for main routes, such as when you’re on the motorway or about to head onto a dual carriageway. Blue is for direction signage and instructions. Red is used for warnings. Brown is for tourist directions, services, etc, and yellow is for road works and potential on-road hazards, like diversions. White is for information and local directions.
Go Walking
You may notice that now is the perfect time to go walking. In lockdown and areas where there are strict measures in place for public transport and driving, you can walk freely around town. You should use this opportunity to go sign hunting. Notice all the signs around you and try to understand what they mean. Spot a pattern and how they are being used. It may be that certain towns or cities have a different method of showing road users what to look out for. Remember that every city, town and parish council has their own local government that deals with these signs being put up, etc. So you won’t always get the consistency of frequency and positioning.
Read
You should buy a road sign book that has all the relevant signs that are still in use. It will give you all the knowledge you need to know. All you have to do is study it and make it a part of your normal life. Eventually the signs will seep into your memory, becoming just like every other piece of information you have in your brain. If you take the time to read the book about 30-minutes or one hour a day all the way up until your test, you will be right as rain. Eventually, the signs will just become what they were designed to be: symbols that connect to images and short pieces of information that are helpful to the driver.
Don’t worry too much about road signs. Many of them are self-explanatory, and some of the rarer ones that seem difficult to understand or remember might not come up in the test.
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