Now, I would like to say first
and foremost that I am a guest in another country and as such, I need to know
and follow their rules. Keeping with
that theme, I’m getting ready to take the required-for-me-but not-other-States
(FAIL, North Carolina!!!) driver’s test.
Apparently it’s pretty intensive and also includes a section testing
your knowledge of the traffic signs. I
thought I would start there as it seemed the most practical. I see these signs every day, and I must admit
that I’m not really 100% sure what all of them are trying to tell me, simply because
there are so many of them. At first I
thought that maybe they were trying to brighten up the roadways, you know, like
those wildflower initiatives or something.
Then I found this handy chart of road signs:
 | |
It’s like confetti.
http://www.usareurpracticetest.com/germany/documents/sign_chart.pdf |
For those of you keeping score
at home, that’s 166 signs that you’ll see on the roads here. I recognized the stop sign. One of them is literally a car driving into a
lake (4th row, 5th from the left). Top row, third from the right? That’s a picture of a car. Umm, why???
In case I forget what I’m sitting in?
I was beginning to get worried.
Is driving here more fraught with peril than in the States? Do the roads just randomly end in lakes
sometimes?
Obviously, I had some work to
do. I dove into the 98-page Introduction
to Driving, and was amazed by the intricacy, the specificity of all those signs
(turns out, the car driving into a lake thing is legit: it means ‘Don’t drive
into the lake’). Then I began noticing a
pattern. Yes, the shapes communicate a
general meaning, which is well-known and similar to our system. But that’s not what I’m talking about. First, a little background. In general: red triangles are warnings, red
circles are restrictions, blue circles are traffic patterns and the rest are ‘informative.’ That’s the basic system, and it seems to work
really well.
So here’s where it gets a little
redundant. Take railroad crossings for
example. These are all signs that tell
you a railroad crossing is coming up:
The first one tells you that the railroad crossing has a
guard gate. The second one is the same
thing, but the marks below mean how far away you are from the gate (240 meters). The next sign means you’re approaching a
railroad crossing without a guard gate.
The second one has the same distance-measure thing. The last two simply mean “railroad crossing.” That’s a total of six signs designed to
inform me that I’m about to cross some train tracks! My driving would in no way be different in
any of these situations. You need to be
careful because there are potential trains.
The one exception you may say is the gate vs. no gate, but I’m pretty
sure I’d notice a gate blocking my way.
That or an oncoming train.
Next, it’s very important to know
who has the right of way when driving here, especially in cities like Nürnberg. The roads here are shared by cars, mopeds,
bikes, people, trucks, and Smarts. And the
roads are narrow and winding, so you really have to know where you can and can’t
go. That I understand. This I don’t.
Both of these signs mean ‘No Entry.’
It’s almost like the one on the
right is the same sign- but squinting at you because somehow it knows you were
thinking about driving through anyways.
Anyways, I think you get the idea.
Now by and large, the other signs I learned about will actually help me
be a safe and courteous driver. They
were really important to know about (again, the whole right-of-way thing). If anything, the German road signs are just
really eager to help us out. Maybe a
little too eager. Like the diagonal
hash-marks. I mean, I could probably
have exited the Autobahn safely without them, but it is nice to know that I
have exactly 300 meters in which to do so.
Or 80, or 240, when there’s a railroad crossing coming up.
That being said, even with all
of the really great signs, there are still a few where I’m not clear on their purpose,
because they seem to be about things that I would have otherwise figured out on
my own or over which I have no control whatsoever. We do this in the states too, but again, not
as specifically. Here are some things
that could happen to your car:
Haha, I love the squinting no entry sign, because that is EXACTLY what the sign would be thinkning. I miss you and your sense of humor, but this is second best. Good luck with crazy German (in a good way :) street signs and driving!
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