Hoot Guide to reading road signsThe staff at Hoot Car Insurance Services are some pretty outstanding men and women, if I say so myself. That's because we offer a level of motoring expertise that many would describe as unmatched in the cheap car insurance business. Judging by the look of some of my colleagues, we must have a good couple of hundred years experience in the motor insurance game between us - and it shows in the quality of customer service that Hoot alone can offer. Until recently, however, the only way to tap into that wealth of motoring knowledge was on a one-to-one basis, over the phone or by email with one of our team. Fortunately for you, we've started writing it all down - in the form of these handy Hoot Guides. So far, we've covered everything from what to look for in a second hand car to what to look out for when buying cheap car insurance, via MOT tests, seatbelt laws and speed limits - and the list of titles is expanding all the time. This particular Hoot Guide concerns road signs, and how to read them. You might think you don't need help in this particular area - especially if you've been driving for a few years - but then you might not know the whole story behind road sign symbology. Most people, whether they drive a car or not, instinctively know what the sign for 'school crossing patrol' is - because the picture of a couple of children with the word 'patrol' written underneath couldn't mean a lot else. But there's a lot more going on with the sign that you might not be aware of, and learning to read these slightly more codified details on familiar signs is a must when it comes to unfamiliar signs in new places. Sign shapes
With a few exceptions most of the road signs in the UK come in three basic shapes, familiar to any student of geometry: triangles, circles, and rectangles. These shapes are symbolic of the type of information contained on the sign.
Our example above, the school crossing patrol sign, has a triangular shape. Contrary to popular belief, this is not to prevent pigeons perching on top of the sign. In fact, the use of a triangle signifies a warning - in this case, a warning to expect children crossing in front of you. All such signs tell the driver to look out for something up ahead, be it children, a junction, a set of traffic lights, falling rocks or even wild animals. Warning signs prepare drivers for a hazard coming up, but they don't instruct you to do something specific. For instance, the crossing patrol sign doesn't tell you to stop for children - it merely tells you to expect them, and leaves taking the appropriate action up to you. When road signs give you an explicit instruction, they have a different shape: the circle. Circular signs give orders, which is easy to remember because they resemble the letter 'O'. Take the familiar 30mph limit sign, which always appears in a circle because it is 'ordering' you not to exceed that speed. Whereas most signs with other shapes need only be taken into consideration, circular signs must be acted on. Failure to do so will most likely end in a crash, followed by a long call to your car insurance company. The third common shape used in UK signs is the rectangle. It's used to convey non-critical (from a road safety point of view) information, like directions to a nearby town or the name of the road you're on. If you're approaching a road sign from a long way off, chances are you'll be aware of its shape long before you can make out any lettering or image. Bear these three basic shapes in mind and you'll be giving yourself an advanced warning of what's coming up ahead - and that can't help but make you a better driver. Sign colours
Modern-day society conditions us to link certain colours with a certain different emotions, and our road signs rely on this to make them more instantly accessible when we're out on the road.
For example, red is associated with sense of danger and of something forbidden, so signs that convey a warning or negative instruction all feature that colour. The vast majority of warning signs feature a red border, as do all the orders signs which prohibit certain vehicles, speeds or manoeuvres. By contrast, the colour blue is used to convey a positive instruction. Whereas a red-bordered circular sign with a picture of a bicycle carries the meaning "you must not cycle here" therefore, a blue circular sign with the same picture means "you must cycle here". The same is true of speed limit signs: a red border gives the maximum speed for that particular road ("you must not drive faster than 30mph"), but a blue one gives the minimum speed ("you must driver faster than 30mph"). On direction signs the use of colour has a different significance; it tells you what kind of road you are driving on. Direction signs on motorways have a blue background; on dual carriageways and other primary routes they have a green background; and on local roads they have a white background with a black border. Any sign of that cheap car insurance?
Understanding the significance of shapes and colours used on UK road signs should make you a better, safer driver, because you'll glean information from them more quickly and more completely than before.
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