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The Car Coach: Road Signs - YNN, Your News Now

The Car Coach: Road Signs

By: Lauren Fix, The Car Coach Traffic signs give you information about the road, the highway, traffic flow, and local laws and regulations. Do you know what all the signs mean? Lauren Fix, the Car Coach, has a brush up on road signs. The shapes and colors of traffic signs have specific meanings that you must be able to recognize immediately. Most drivers know what the signs mean but other may have difficulty remembering them from driver’s ed. •GREEN: guide and directional information, like exits.
•RED: Stop, yield, do not enter, or wrong way
•BLUE: Motorist service guidance, also used to mark handicapped parking spaces.
•ORANGE: Construction and maintenance warning
•YELLOW: General warning
•WHITE: Regulatory, like speed limit signs.
•BLACK: Regulatory SHAPES:
•Octagon: The octagon shape is exclusively used for stop signs.
•Diamond: The diamond is a warning sign; alerting drivers to potentially hazardous road conditions ahead. These warning signs can alert drivers to a sharp curve ahead, caution drivers that the road is slippery when wet or alert drivers of a hidden intersection.
•Circle: The circle is a regulatory sign to inform drivers they should not be doing something. These signs inform drivers not to enter, perform a U-turn or turn left or right.
•Pentagon: The pentagon is another type of warning sign, specifically alerting drivers to watch for school children or pedestrians.
•Triangle: The triangle is a different type of regulatory sign that alerts drivers to slow down because another direction of traffic has the right of way. This shape is reserved exclusively for the yield sign.
•Pennant: The pennant is a warning sign that inform drivers not to pass traffic in front of them. This sign is placed at the beginning of, and at intervals, along a zone where sight distance is restricted or where other conditions make passing traffic dangerous.
•Rectangle: There are two different shapes of rectangular signs: vertical and horizontal. Vertical signs inform drivers of speed limits, weight limits and railroad crossings. A horizontal sign could inform drivers of a one-way street, a possible road hazard or as a mile marker. Do you think that everyone knows his or her streets signs? A recent survey found that most drivers believe it's okay to drive the maximum posted speed limit even in bad weather conditions. Fifty-four percent don't know what an advance warning sign for a school is, and thirty-four percent are clueless when seeing a warning sign that means your lane ends ahead, merge into the other lane. Do these drivers create a safety hazard to other motorists? Yes they do!