[lang_agnostic]

I'm quite surprised but how large and extensive this guide is.

As someone who learned to drive in Europe I've always been extremely confused by the signage and road layout of American roads. There is a pretty big difference in quality between state roads and federal roads. The former seem to have no coherent style, layout or identity while the latter seem pretty consistent. Given the above documents I can see there is a consistent style but the style does not seem to translate to a consistent user experience.

The three things that stand out to me are the amount of text on each sign, the lack of standardized rule about entries and exists, and the lack of road markings, specially at intersections.

The first one isn't necessarily a big problem but it's very weird to have all this text when you could have instead a very recognizable sign that you can understand from afar (the one way sign is a great example), instead of a white sign with black text that you can only read once you're close to it and only understand if you know English.

The second one makes highway layout extremely confusing and, at least for me, feel dangerous and stressful. Some Signs can tell you to take an exit with make 20m of notice and it's a 90° right turn and you also need to go from 120 kmph to 30 in that span. The reduced speed sign is only visible after you've turned so if you dont know the area you're almost always going too fast. Because it's a 90° turn with trees in the sides you can't anticipate what the traffic is like after the turn. If you know the area you probably have no problem handling this situation, but driving there for the first time feels like driving through a minefield. There are other instances of this with left exits, overtaking from both sides, turn right on red, stop sights everywhere, no priority system, and more.

The last one is incredibly frustrating when you come from Europe because over there, most intersections have redundant signage and markings. Intersections have street lights that tell you where to go, the road layout is advertised on a sign well in advance, and the paint on the road tells you how to turn and where to stop and even indicates speed limits or directions. Intersections in americas provide no such affordances. Intersections are basically a free for all between the incoming trafic, the people turning right on red and the pedestrians. I was expecting a lot more from a country which is built for cars.

It feels like roads are built for cars but not for drivers.

[xxpor]

>Some Signs can tell you to take an exit with make 20m of notice and it's a 90° right turn and you also need to go from 120 kmph to 30 in that span.

There should be a sign for this situation, for example:

https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6277564,-122.3289325,3a,73.1...

Also FWIW: https://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/htm/2009/part2/part2c.htm#table2C...

Europe does tend to have better signage in intersections. But the concept of a national speed limit and then not marking the speed limit when it's in effect seems brain dead. How are you supposed to know what it is if say you just rented a car from the airport?

The other thing that kills me is not using a different color for separating lanes that run in the same direction vs different directions (white vs yellow in the US) How do you know at a glance if a road is one way?

[vladvasiliu]

> But the concept of a national speed limit and then not marking the speed limit when it's in effect seems brain dead.

Yeah. Have you driven in France? On regular roads, there's no "national speed limit". Depending on the department, it can be 80 or 90 km/h.

> How are you supposed to know what it is if say you just rented a car from the airport?

Nul ne doit ignorer la loi (no one may be ignorant of the law).

> How do you know at a glance if a road is one way?

If there are only two lanes, you look at the line on the left border of the road. If the line is continuous, both lanes go the same way. If it's dashed or there's no line (and your side doesn't have one either) you're on a two-way road.

If there are multiple lanes, there will be a double continuous line separating the ways. The double line can sometimes appear on two-lane roads, it always means the road is two-way.

Yellow markings exist, they usually mean road-work / temporary signaling.

Best rule of thumb: if you're not clearly on a highway, it's very likely a two-way road. Clearly means there's no other separate set of lanes close by. We don't have as much space as in the US where the lanes going the other way are so far away you can barely see them.

[dmd]

> Nul ne doit ignorer la loi (no one may be ignorant of the law).

I got a parking ticket once in a place that had parking signs and a parking meter. Turned out that particular parking meter was only for cars with a specific permit. How could I have known that? Because there was supposed to be a painted 1" green circle around its base. Even if I had known what that meant, the circle had worn away probably years prior. No, there was no mention of these circles or their meaning on any of the parking signs.

[ghaff]

Urban street parking in particular can have really confusing signage with all sorts of conditions and exceptions. And, especially where parking is really tight, I often find that I feel I'm missing something if there's actually an open space.

[xxpor]

>Nul ne doit ignorer la loi (no one may be ignorant of the law).

Sure, but humans aren't clairvoyant. You can make the effort to look it up, or the road authority can just put up some basic signs.

[vladvasiliu]

I agree with you, but that's how things work over here.

To stay on the topic of speed limits, there's a national speed limit for towns / cities, 50 kmph. It's usually not posted as such, but there being a sign with a town name means you must observe that.

Other peculiarities you have to know: when you enter a town, there may be a different speed limit posted than the national limit, typically 30 kmph, very rarely 70. It matters if the speed limit sign is physically attached to the name sign, or if it stands on its own. In the former case, it means that's the speed limit for all the streets of the town. If not, it's the regular limit, meaning until the first intersection, when the default one comes in effect.

The signs are otherwise identical.

[eCa]

While (as a European) I agree with your point regarding speed signs, I think an important point is that there are plenty of traffic laws that differs (even) between EU countries. So when going driving in a foreign country one really should look up at least basic rules beforehand, and speed limits will most likely be front and center.

[Ichthypresbyter]

Note that if you cross a border in Europe (not necessarily in the EU) by car, you will pass a sign [0] giving the default speed limits for each type of road.

[0]https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:National_speed_limit...

[munch117]

> The other thing that kills me is not using a different color for separating lanes that run in the same direction vs different directions (white vs yellow in the US) How do you know at a glance if a road is one way?

I agree completely, I've lived with it all my life and I don't understand it either. How you know? You don't, always. When in doubt, keep right.

50 years ago my dad had an accident precisely on account of this. He got confused about what stretch of road he was on, changed lanes into oncoming traffic, and hit a truck head on.

Good thing he was driving a Volvo. He bruised his knee.

[gpvos]

In Europe, the lane to your left is in principle always oncoming traffic, unless you see a separate road to your left with a bit of grass in between. Or at least there will be a continuous instead of a dashed line.

[munch117]

That means you have to look in two places, correlate the information and make a deduction. I would prefer a style of line that is immediately recognisable on its own.

[331c8c71]

It's simpler than that, one can only change lanes when they are separated by a dashed line. Solid lines you are not supposed to cross.

[gpvos]

Well, there are bidirectional roads with dashed lines in the middle, so you can overtake, but you should obviously not stay in the lane with oncoming traffic for longer than that. I can see how colours can help there, but in Europe the road situation tends to be clear enough that that isn't necessary.

[gpvos]

I've always seen national speed limit signs at the exit of airports, similar to the signs you see at national borders. Here's the one at the exit of Schiphol: https://goo.gl/maps/PD6jvvpsDgV3Rwq97

[CorrectHorseBat]

>But the concept of a national speed limit and then not marking the speed limit when it's in effect seems brain dead. How are you supposed to know what it is if say you just rented a car from the airport?

By learning the traffic rules before you rent a car, how else would you know what else is different than what you are used to?

Not marking the national default speed limit is done to limit the amount of signs

[dylan604]

> https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6277564,-122.3289325,3a,73.1...

I wonder if the MUTCD has a section on keeping the graffiti consistent nationally as well.

[philwelch]

Turning right on red is the one thing I'll defend here. You can only turn right on red after coming to a complete stop, and you have to yield to any traffic (including pedestrian traffic) before you make the turn. Given those restrictions, it's strictly an improvement as far as traffic flow is concerned.

Totally agree with you on exits though, especially left exits. Since moving to Texas I've become a big fan of frontage roads, but not everyplace has the room for that.

[spacedcowboy]

I'd be happy if people even stopped at STOP signs - the number of idiots who think the law doesn't apply to them at the STOP signs around our way is stunning. A kid was killed a year or so back because some teenager blew through the intersection without checking.

As for right-on-red, I think (as a Brit) it's awesome, but I don't think I've ever seen a single person come to a complete stop before going right, in the 20 years I've lived here. At best, it's slow-down-while-I-check.

[brewdad]

Also, right on red means those drivers are so preoccupied with looking left to see if traffic is clear they never even glance to their right until after they have completed their turn and are accelerating. Non-automobile users beware.

[giraffe_lady]

Those are some of the most routinely and carelessly broken of all driving rules, which is really saying something. Being a pedestrian in a large city that allows right on red is scary as shit, I've had more close calls that way than everything else combined. The only thing that comes close is uncontrolled crosswalks across four lanes. Which also should not exist.

[devilbunny]

Frontage roads are quite useful, but the near-complete lack of cloverleaf ramps in Texas is maddening. You can't just smoothly flow from a freeway to a surface street, which means you're always having to hit traffic signals. 610 at Westheimer in Houston is a perfect example of all that going completely wrong.