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Internet Survey: Road signs are often inconsistent

Road traffic signs in Europe are far from serving their purpose always and everywhere. Two thirds of the drivers who participated in an Internet survey conducted by European automobile clubs believe that road signage often is not adequate to the traffic situation and road routing. The major source of annoyance are signs obscured by other signs or foliage, followed by inconsistent road signs. The most urgent demand of European drivers is to take corrective actions in respect of these two deficiencies.

Between October 2004 and January 2005 some 13,000 drivers in Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and Switzerland answered a questionnaire on the website their respective automobile club. The purpose of the survey was to find out whether European drivers are satisfied with road signage and understand the signs correctly. The answers were analysed by the University of Barcelona (Research and Development Department) in cooperation with the Spanish automobile club RACC. The result of the survey is largely consistent with the telephone survey simultaneously conducted by ADAC (see "Telephone survey on the overabundance of traffic signs"). It is certainly not a result the competent public authorities can be proud of, and it should make the responsible bodies think.

In addition to inconsistent or obscured signs, European drivers have to cope with signs which are placed so close to what they are intended to make aware of that drivers notice them too late and have not enough time to react. This is a particularly frequent problem in Spain, Italy and Croatia. This result is clearly in line with the ADAC telephone survey which revealed that Spanish and Italian drivers have by far the most problems with wrongly placed signs. In almost all European countries drivers complain about road signs which are no longer noticed due to their placement in the immediate vicinity of large billboards.

Motorists in Italy, Belgium and Spain mainly complain about a lack of signage providing important information, whereas to Portuguese, Finish or Norwegian drivers the information provided on the signs often appears to complex. Germans, Portuguese and Belgians on their part criticise that there is too much information provided on one sign.

Already in the telephone survey, Belgian, German and Austrian motorists urgently called for a reduction of the number of road signs. Their demand has been confirmed again by the Internet survey. 

The Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals adopted in 1968 provides for mandatory, information, prohibition/restriction and danger signs at the international level. On the basis of the Convention, uniform road signs should theoretically be used throughout Europe. In the practice of European road traffic, however, this is absolutely not the case. Therefore part of the Internet survey was intended to identify the extent to which individual road signs contained in the Vienna Convention are understood.

The result is that drivers often do not understand the signs, with parking prohibition signs causing the most problems. In particular the sign prohibiting parking alternately on odd and even days is completely unfamiliar to most drivers. Thirty 32 percent of the European drivers are not able to understand the mandatory sign „minimum speed 30km/h“. Two thirds of the Spanish motorists do not know the information signs indicating the direction of priority roads at intersections.   

Correct road signs providing clear and easily understandable information help to keep traffic flowing and thereby contribute to improving road safety. Especially on unfamiliar roads drivers rely on information allowing them to successfully deal with traffic situations and to find their way. Therefore road signage must not be left to chance.