Road signs in the United Kingdom Totally Explained

Everything about Road Signs In The United Kingdom totally explained

Road signs in the United Kingdom conform broadly to European norms, though a number of signs are unique to Britain and direction signs omit European route numbers.
The system currently in use was developed in the late 1950s and the early 1960s by the Anderson Committee, which established the motorway signing system, and by the Worboys Committee, which reformed signing for existing all-purpose roads. Older ("pre-Worboys") signs belong to a different system which developed incrementally after 1904, when the Local Government Board first published a circular on traffic signing. The standards governing this system remained of an advisory nature until 1933 when regulations for traffic signs were published under powers created by the Road Traffic Act 1930.

Design

UK roadsigns do, or should, follow an extremely complex and detailed set of guidelines:
In 1957 Colin Anderson, the chairman of the P&O Line shipping company, was appointed chairman of a government committee to design signs for the new motorway network. A system was needed that could be easily read at high speed. Two graphic designers were appointed, Jock Kinneir and his assistant, and later business partner, Margaret Calvert to design the system of signage. The new signs were first used on the Preston By-pass in 1958.
   Another graphic designer, Herbert Spencer, published two articles in 1961 that illustrated the shortcomings of all other British road signs. T. G. Usborne, of the Ministry of Transport, who had been in charge of the Anderson Committee, formed the Worboys Committee in 1963 to review signage on all British roads. Kinneir and Calvert were again commissioned as the designers for the new system. The result was a document that defined traffic signing in Britain: Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions (TSRGD). It was first introduced on 1 January 1965 but has been updated since. It is comparable with the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices in the United States.
   Britain is the only European Union member nation to use imperial, rather than metric measurements for distance and speed,. However, vehicle weight limits are signed only in metric (TSRGD 1981), and metric units may optionally be used in addition to imperial ones for height, width and length restrictions.
   TSRGD 1994 prescribed a system of white-on-brown direction signs for tourist attractions and also introduced the Guildford Rules (see below). TSRGD 2002 contains the current standards and includes a sophisticated system of black-on-yellow direction signs for roadworks.
   Almost all signs have rounded corners. This is partly for aesthetic reasons, but also because it's safer for anyone coming into contact with a sign and it makes it more durable.

Colours

Three colour combinations are used on Worboys direction signs depending upon the category of the route. A road may be a motorway (white on blue), a primary route (white on dark green with yellow route numbers), or a non-primary route (black on white).

Guildford Rules

A colour-coding system is used to indicate information pertaining to different categories of route. The system was developed in the mid-1980s as part of an effort to eliminate sign clutter, and takes its name from the town of Guildford, Surrey, where experimental versions of this signing system were tested. However, with the arrival of a new generation of traffic signing specialists, the term Guildford Rules is now infrequently used.
On Advance Direction Signs the background colour indicates the category of route on which it's located. Transport is a mixed-case font and is used for all text on fixed permanent signs except route numbers on motorway signs. and Direction Signs (DS) at the junction itself, showing where to turn. However, a DS may also be rectangular with an arrow when it's necessary to indicate a direction other than left or right.

Street name signs

Legally these are not defined as traffic signs in the UK. This gives authorities flexibility on how to design and where to locate them. They can be fixed to a signpost, wall, lamp column or building. As well as the Transport alphabets used on road signs, it's also common for street nameplates to use the Kindersley serif font.

Further Information

Get more info on 'Road Signs In The United Kingdom'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://road_signs_in_the_united_kingdom.totallyexplained.com">Road signs in the United Kingdom Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.