Signposts in France

In Europe, from one country to another, from one city to another, let you really appreciate the efficiency and convenience of the modern road network, ‘all roads lead to Rome’, in Europe is not just an adjective, criss-crossed, well-connected road network does bring great convenience to the travellers of various countries. In particular, the perfect motorway network has been the size of the European countries and cities strung together into a unified whole, the European Union countries have a unified number of motorways, such as Europe 1, Europe 2, etc., and the country's roads also have their own number. When you first come to Europe and drive on the road, you do not have to worry about recognising the road, with the map in your hand, the roadside signs will prompt you to follow a certain number of highways to reach your destination smoothly.

Europe's long history of the road, but the charm remains, especially the road facilities are very good, the road laid out in the road signs illustrated, intuitive and clear. The European Union countries basically unified the warning signs, ban signs, directive signs and traffic signs of the four major categories of traffic signs, but the countries according to the actual situation of their own national standards have also been issued to supplement, improve the traffic signs suitable for their own country. The wayfinding signs of European countries are characterised by graphic symbols as the main body, supplemented by words and colours, which fully reflect the humanistic concern of modern civilisation with its concise, vivid and graphic design. The following will briefly introduce France. Britain, Switzerland, Italy and other countries to increase our knowledge and understanding of the European wayfinding sign system.

Signposts in France

France is the second largest country in Europe, with a land area of about 550,000 square kilometres. France has a very well-developed road network, with a total length of about one million kilometres, including more than 8,000 kilometres of motorways, 30,000 kilometres of national highways, and more than 340,000 kilometres of provincial highways. France borders eight countries, including Switzerland, Italy, Germany and Spain, and ten European motorways cross its territory, such as E05E09, E15, E17 and E19. In France, the road number is an important part of the road sign system, the European motorway number for the E prefix, the national motorway number for the A prefix, the general road number for the N prefix, the local road number for the D prefix, the temporary road number for the S prefix.

1. Colour of wayfinding signs

The colour of a wayfinding sign is a very important component because it makes the sign stand out from the background in which it is placed, increases the driver's attention to the sign and helps the driver to quickly identify the type and meaning of the sign. In France, some wayfinding signs have a large amount of information, but the use of different colours to differentiate between the different types of information makes the wayfinding signs much more legible. There are basically six kinds of French wayfinding signs as far as the base colour of the sign face is concerned:

(1) Green base with white pattern, mainly used for European motorways and their numbering, which is basically the same as the form in other European countries.

(2) Blue background, white pattern, mainly used for national motorways.

(3) White background, black pattern, mainly used for general road signs, as well as highway lane indication auxiliary signs, exit advance notice auxiliary signs, etc..

(4) Yellow background with black or blue pattern, mainly used for airport motorways, as well as local roads or temporary road numbers.

(5) Red background with white pattern, mainly used for national motorways and general road numbering signs.

(6) Brown background, white pattern, mainly used for tourist attraction signs and some highway service facility signs.

2. Setting of motorway wayfinding signs

(1) Exit warning signs

Exit warning signs are the most important types of signs on motorways, which provide road users with hints about the main destinations that can be reached by the exits of the interchanges in front of them. The exit warning sign of French motorway has the following characteristics:

① When it warns the information of exit direction, it also warns the information of main line forward direction, the exit warning sign generally adopts the gantry-type steel structure, on the same beam, the left side of the main line forward information, and the right side of the exit direction information. This practice is more suitable for the smaller spatial distance between the interchanges, can be omitted to preview the forward direction of the location of the distance sign, but its disadvantage is that the amount of information at the same point is too large, the driver is difficult to recognise all the information in a short period of time.

② The information on the signboard of the advance warning sign takes the combination of road number and destination name, the road number is set on the upper edge of the sign, and the signboard shows the name of the city or other important places that can be reached by the road. The arrows of the advance warning signs are placed at the bottom of the sign face and are mainly used to assign lanes and do not represent directions, so the arrows are vertically downward and aligned with the lanes. Next to the arrow is information on the distance to the exit, which is required to be relatively fixed in the country, but does not seem to be standardised in France, but is flexibly adapted to the site, so that the distance figure varies.

(2) Exit signs

The information conveyed by exit signs is basically the same as that of exit warning signs, the difference is that the exit signs are very close to the exit and do not need to indicate the distance information, which focuses on the direction of travelling to the exit is clearly indicated. Exit signs are generally set up two, the first set in the exit near the beginning of the deceleration lane, the second set in the exit near the fork. France's exit signs have 2 kinds of situation, the first is not marked in addition to the distance information, the form of the exit signs, content pattern and the exit of the preview signs are basically the same; the second is the exit signs for the black pattern on a white background signs, and the blue main line ahead of the preview signs to make a difference, the exit number using a fixed form of the symbols, the black arrow is tilted downward pointing to the exit ramp.

(3) Coordinated Setting of Directional Signs in Front of Interchange Exits

There are mainly 2 types of exit advance warning signs and exit directional signs in front of interchange exits of highways, and a set of signs in front of the exit of France's A6 (E15) motorway in Navel is taken as an example here to introduce the signage setup in front of the exit of the interchanges.

① Point ① is an exit warning sign, 1600m away from the exit bifurcation point, and a single-post sign with consistent content is set up in the central median and on the side of the road to ensure that vehicles in the inner and outer lanes can clearly see the contents of the sign face. The sign face is divided into two parts, the upper part is mainly set up with the arrow pattern of the road ahead and the exit direction, accompanied by the most representative and important information, and the lower part highlights the standard symbols of the three-dimensional intersection and labels the distance to the exit. The first point of the exit warning sign focuses on reminding the driver that the exit of the interchange is about to be reached, and at the same time knows the main direction of travel and destination.

② The exit warning sign at point ② is 750m away from the exit bifurcation point, and this point is changed to add other important warning information on the basis of setting up a large gate a warning sign. The focus of the overhead sign is to convey more information about the road, whether it is the main road ahead or the exit direction, and to add other important advance information on the basis of the first warning sign.

③ Point ③ is the exit indication sign, which is set near the starting point of the exit deceleration lane, and the information it conveys is basically the same as that of the previous preview sign, except that the distance information is no longer labelled, and a vertical downward lane indication arrow is added to the signboard in the direction of exit to indicate that traffic in the direction of exit should enter the widened deceleration lane.

④ The exit directional sign at point ④ is set at an appropriate position in front of the exit bifurcation point. Since the exit direction has been changed to two lanes at this point, the signage for the exit direction is changed to include two vertically downward lane indicating arrows to keep the number of lanes consistent with that of the road surface. It can be seen that the lane indication arrows on the signage are closely related to the allocation of lanes on the road, which is also one of the main features of French motorway signage.