We haven't paid a lot of attention to street signs in Poland since we don't have a car, but on a few occasions when we've been out with friends, its been interesting to see the similarities and differences in the street signage. Some signs are pretty obvious what they mean, others can be figured out in context of the road conditions...
No passing and Roundabout
Cross walk and general warning sign (?)
Speed limit and (end) of deer crossing
Men working and school zone (?)
rough road and a highway number marking (17) (These are rare except on the major roads)
River (the name of the river is Wieprz) and ??
Wypadki translates as "incidents"
Men working and school zone (?)
ReplyDeletehehe thx for smile it was just what i needed...
The Polish street sign system follows the European and international standards. So once you get to know and understand it, you will be able to drive in most of other countries in the world. One of the notable exception to this is the US, which has never adopted the standard. The main difference is that in the US you will find a lot of signs in the "verbal" format, i.e. "Yield", "No turn on red", "Sped Limit 70", etc. Elsewhere the signs are symbolic. If there are some written explanations, they only provide additional explanations and the sign should be well understood without them. The reason is that a driver travelling across Europe cannot be forced to learn 30 different languages. The white and yellow rectangle means "you have priority". The yellow triangle means "yield".
ReplyDeleteRafał, a "highway" is about any road that is used for transit/intercity traffic (so a "droga krajowa" or even "droga wojewódzka" is a highway too). What you describe as "highways", i.e. the "autostrady", are motorways (or freeways). And the "drogi ekspresowe", i.e. the S-roads, are in fact nearly motorway-standard, and they would be signed with the motorway sign in any other European country, as they differ very little from the actual motorways (the most noticeable one is the speed limit - 140 vs 120 km/h). They even have the same speed limit as actual motorways in some countries, like Spain.
ReplyDeleteRoad signs in Poland
ReplyDeleteThe distance shown under the signs says when you can expect the thing indicated by the sign.
ReplyDeleteWhen there are arrows next to that figure it means that this indicated situation appers on this particular distance beginning from the sign.
These particular blue signs with white arrows mean:
1) Your left lane - no exit, right one - straignt ahead
2) Your lane splits in two
Or sth like that :p
Generally - blue signs are informational signs.
Similar signs with arrows are often before bigger intersections and say where you can go from each lane of the road you're on.
What you've probably noticed is the number of signs everywhere. It's definitely too many of them. I once read an article that said there was about 100 signs on a distance of 1 km in one of the cities in Poland. Ridiculous... :p