Unnecessarily Accurate Distances on Signs

[pjr10th]

6ft 6 restriction 217 yards with unnecessary 'AHEAD'

I can only presume someone copied it directly over from the Traffic Order making the restriction.

Also note the unnecessary Police sign explaining the yellow lines already present on the road.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/PAM1WbhH675LDaun8

[pjr10th]

Also not sure if it's exactly the topic of the thread, but it's still an unnecessary distance on the sign:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/wuXgK2mEa9finfC56

This 'for 3 miles' under the clearway sign seems unhelpful, given that I would doubt someone 2 or 3 miles away from it is going to pay heed to it and not stop. Furthermore, the restrictions actually finishes somewhat short of 3 miles away, and 3 miles away is in the middle of a different clearway zone.

[SteelCamel]

Also note the unnecessary Police sign explaining the yellow lines already present on the road.

It looks like the yellow lines are new - there are no lines in April. The sign is gone by October. So it looks like it was put up as a temporary measure to remind people about the new restriction. Or possibly to clarify it - you can't see how far the yellow lines go, but "No parking on this road" makes it clear that the full length is restricted so there's no point looking for the end of the lines.

[pjr10th]

Another fairly recent one: 232 yards

Wonder what would have happened if they'd just put 230 yards. Do we think people would have sped up right at the last hump?

https://imgur.com/5X8DfW5

[Bryn666]

6ft 6 restriction 217 yards with unnecessary 'AHEAD'

I can only presume someone copied it directly over from the Traffic Order making the restriction.

Also note the unnecessary Police sign explaining the yellow lines already present on the road.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/PAM1WbhH675LDaun8

But on the plus side, Z bends and 1964 style bus prohibition sign.

[Skipsy]

314 Yards Spin round because it won't save the angle in the link here for some reason

I am confused. I cannot see anyting that looks like 314 yards in this image - just a normal road through Fleet.

Seems to be something wrong with the URL. It takes me, not to Fleet, but to somewhere fairly local to me with a different URL. However if you take the latitude and longitude from the original link and go there on google maps you do get a sign for a low bridge in 314 yards.

No idea what happened either :/
And that's also around where I live so very weird coincidence that the link broke like that

[pjr10th]

6ft 6 restriction 217 yards with unnecessary 'AHEAD'

I can only presume someone copied it directly over from the Traffic Order making the restriction.

Also note the unnecessary Police sign explaining the yellow lines already present on the road.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/PAM1WbhH675LDaun8

But on the plus side, Z bends and 1964 style bus prohibition sign.

'Z bends' still legally permitted sign in Jersey.https://www.jerseylaw.je/laws/current/P ... oc83309586

Is the no buses sign no longer used in the UK? In Jersey it also includes 'Chars-à-banc', a term roughly equivalent to coaches on tour. Mainly used to manage the flow of coaches around rural areas. But does mean you get them in bizarre places and occasionally with the sign, 'except buses', which to the layman therefore reads 'No buses except buses'.

[Bryn666]

6ft 6 restriction 217 yards with unnecessary 'AHEAD'

I can only presume someone copied it directly over from the Traffic Order making the restriction.

Also note the unnecessary Police sign explaining the yellow lines already present on the road.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/PAM1WbhH675LDaun8

But on the plus side, Z bends and 1964 style bus prohibition sign.

'Z bends' still legally permitted sign in Jersey.https://www.jerseylaw.je/laws/current/P ... oc83309586

Is the no buses sign no longer used in the UK? In Jersey it also includes 'Chars-à-banc', a term roughly equivalent to coaches on tour. Mainly used to manage the flow of coaches around rural areas. But does mean you get them in bizarre places and occasionally with the sign, 'except buses', which to the layman therefore reads 'No buses except buses'.

The Jersey Traffic Signs Order is heavily derived from the 1964 TSRGD although all warning signs in Jersey appear to be using post-1975 designs as UK manufacturers don't keep the old styles on file.

Our no buses sign changed meaning in 1997. The pictogram for the bus was updated in 1975.

[Big L]

48 Yards in Richmond. The triangle is now the other way up - this would be in the botched thread if streetview showed it that way.

[Vierwielen]

Width limit 1650 yards ahead. How do I measure 1650 yards on my odometer? If of course yo know that there are 1760 yards in a mile, yo could clock up a mile and you will then know that you have overshot the limitation by less than 100 yards.

The mentally agile might realise that 1650 yards is in fact 1500 metres. So is it fortutious that the obstruction is a round number of metres ahead or is this just a monkey with a calculator? I drove my "Google Car" along this road and after 1070 mmetres came tho the back entrance to Fleet Services (London-bound). There was nothing remarkable about the point 1500 metres from this sign!

[Beardy5632]

5 yards!

[tom66]

I think these on the A14 are a bit odd. Surely 500 yards and 300 yards would be close enough, and immediately more intuitive.

https://www.google.com/maps/@52.2717923 ... ?entry=ttu
https://www.google.com/maps/@52.2323939 ... ?entry=ttu

[SteelCamel]

Width limit 1650 yards ahead. How do I measure 1650 yards on my odometer? If of course yo know that there are 1760 yards in a mile, yo could clock up a mile and you will then know that you have overshot the limitation by less than 100 yards.

The mentally agile might realise that 1650 yards is in fact 1500 metres. So is it fortutious that the obstruction is a round number of metres ahead or is this just a monkey with a calculator? I drove my "Google Car" along this road and after 1070 mmetres came tho the back entrance to Fleet Services (London-bound). There was nothing remarkable about the point 1500 metres from this sign!

It looks like someone forgot the signs for the restriction! The road is signed with a 6ft 6in width restriction from the other end - and 1650 yards takes you to about here, just before a narrow bridge. This would be a logical place for a restriction to start, but there's just "road narrows" rather than a restriction sign.

[Vierwielen]

5 yards!

It is my understanding that there is a limit on the angles with which a driver is expected to see a sign. In the case of this sign, anybody in a standard car woudl be hard-presed to see the traffic lights.

[Nathan_A_RF]

It looks like someone forgot the signs for the restriction! The road is signed with a 6ft 6in width restriction from the other end - and 1650 yards takes you to about here, just before a narrow bridge. This would be a logical place for a restriction to start, but there's just "road narrows" rather than a restriction sign.

The signs are here actually
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.29880 ... ?entry=ttu

[SteelCamel]

It looks like someone forgot the signs for the restriction! The road is signed with a 6ft 6in width restriction from the other end - and 1650 yards takes you to about here, just before a narrow bridge. This would be a logical place for a restriction to start, but there's just "road narrows" rather than a restriction sign.

The signs are here actually
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.29880 ... ?entry=ttu

Well spotted. A perfectly sensible place for the restriction, as the road does narrow there, and it's past the services entrance. Only problem is it's only 1400 yards from the "restriction 1650 yards ahead" sign.

[swissferry]

5 yards!

It is my understanding that there is a limit on the angles with which a driver is expected to see a sign. In the case of this sign, anybody in a standard car woudl be hard-presed to see the traffic lights.

I've lost count of the number of red light jumpers I've seen at this pedestrian crossing. While some were boy racer types, some I suspect simply worryingly didn't see the red light when they emerged from the junctions on either side.

[Vierwielen]

5 yards!

It is my understanding that there is a limit on the angles with which a driver is expected to see a sign. In the case of this sign, anybody in a standard car woudl be hard-presed to see the traffic lights.

I've lost count of the number of red light jumpers I've seen at this pedestrian crossing. While some were boy racer types, some I suspect simply worryingly didn't see the red light when they emerged from the junctions on either side.

There is a similar problem here. Somebody entering the mini-roundabout from the road on the left who then turns left onto the main road can easily miss the beleisha beacon which is about 30 metres down the road. In both cases, the driver making the turn is having to check that everything is OK in front of him before he has a chance to check what on on the side of the road that he is following.

The same junction has another bit of poor signposting. If you have just filled up with petrol here and you wish to turn right, you are too close to the small sign asking you to turn left and then to use the the roundabout. I suspect that the sign was funded by the garage and as "Every little helps" [to swell our profit], we will make the sign as small as possible.

[Octaviadriver]

This is a little off topic, but it doesn't seem worth starting a new one for this unnecessarily accurate speeding conviction.

I was researching my family history and searching through newspaper reports for anything mentioning an ancestor's name when I found a report in the West Sussex County Times dated 13 June 1925 that bore his name. It stated that he exceeded a 10mph limit in Crawley by driving at 33 miles 344 yards per hour. 344 yards doesn't quite equate to 0.2 of a mile, as that would be 352 yards. I assume the police would use stopwatches to time the car over a given distance, so I can't see how they could be that accurate, so why didn't they just say he was driving at 33 mph?

[Vierwielen]

This is a little off topic, but it doesn't seem worth starting a new one for this unnecessarily accurate speeding conviction.

I was researching my family history and searching through newspaper reports for anything mentioning an ancestor's name when I found a report in the West Sussex County Times dated 13 June 1925 that bore his name. It stated that he exceeded a 10mph limit in Crawley by driving at 33 miles 344 yards per hour. 344 yards doesn't quite equate to 0.2 of a mile, as that would be 352 yards. I assume the police would use stopwatches to time the car over a given distance, so I can't see how they could be that accurate, so why didn't they just say he was driving at 33 mph?

I would say that they were monkeys with calculators. Assuming that he was clocked over a 100 metre stretch of road travelling at about 15 m/s (which approximates to 34 mph), it would have taken about 7 seconds to cover the distance. Assuming that their stopwatches worked to 0.1, then at best they could approximate his speed to the nearest 1.5% or avout 0.5 mph.