Have You Forgotten How to Read Basic Road Signs?

If you learned how to read road signs for your driver’s test only to forget them once you got on the road, then you could be endangering yourself and other drivers. Every driver is responsible for keeping the meaning of the signs on the road fresh in their minds. Here are two ways you can refresh your memory.

Quiz yourself

Take a road sign quiz, to test your current ability to read basic road signs. When you know where the gaps are in your knowledge, you can focus on re-memorizing the signs you were fuzzy on instead of aimlessly refreshing (or worse, driving around not knowing what they mean!).

Learn the road sign “code”

Another good way to remember what street signs mean is to learn the “universal language” of these signs. This way, if you encounter a specific sign you don’t remember, you can piece together what it means based on its color and shape (two factors that distinguish road signs from one another). According to the Federal Highway Administration, these are the eight categories of signs you find on the road:

road signs; Image illustrates the shape and color of a sign. Red octagon-shape for regulatory; yellow diamond-shape for warning; green rectangular-shape with the longer direction horizontal shape for guide; blue square for services; orange triangle-shape for construction; brown square shape for recreation; fluorescent yollow/green pentagon-shape for school zone; and coral triangle-shape for incident management.

Photo credit: Federal Highway Administration

Road signs tell drivers what they should and shouldn’t do and are a key component to directing traffic on our roadways. Keep yourself and others safe by understanding what road signs mean and obeying them!