Talk:Driving

World's most deadly highways

I found an interesting and informative news story. Perhaps we can incorporate some information in the relevant articles sometime soon. --Saqib (talk) 21:39, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Tricky - there are some quite ambivalent/paradoxical issues here - (a) is it a good idea to identify places that are not worth taking a car/vehicle to? (b) if indeed wikivoyage is a positive site - with a commercial newspaper touting scary footage of absurd driving locations, is it worth really indulging? - Surely more generic comments for some countries would be better - for regions rather than sites sats (talk) 09:52, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

• Newfoundland Moose Sign.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 23:53, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Road ends

Australian unfenced road

Beware of the bears

For reference File:Gros Morne NP 03.jpg depicts a similar road sign, but with more background, which may help in looking for a replacement if the file is deleted. AlasdairW (talk) 00:04, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

The road sign is clearly the focus of that image too, so de minimis does not apply. What did the sign look like in 1968 or 1941 (i.e. one where Canadian copyright has expired and which is free also in USA)? Alternatively an old comics image could perhaps be used. --LPfi (talk) 06:17, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

I doubt that there was such a sign in 1941, and in the 1960s it probably just was text "beware of moose". We can think a bit wider. A replacement image could be any other interesting road sign, but equally it could be a picture of a road or vehicles. Here are some possibilities. AlasdairW (talk) 21:42, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Road signs

Swept in from the pub

There have been some discussions and addition and removal of galleries related to European road signs. As European non-driver it is hard for me to guess what signs are important to explain e.g. for US drivers. As the signs are pictogram-based, many of them are intuitive, but certainly not all. I assume other European editors also don't know what would be optimal, so I think we need others to weight in.

There are some galleries in Driving in Europe and more for individual countries. As the variation is small between continental EU countries, there is little need for duplication per se, but I don't know to what extent one can assume drivers to read both the European article and the ones for individual countries (which have their peculiarities).

Do drivers study traffic law or traffic signs before driving in a new country? I assume they are not, at least not to any great degree, but I might be wrong, and that would of course affect what we need to tell.

Some of the articles became rather picture-heavy with a few less-established editors doing a lot of editing regarding images. I think we shouldn't apply our minimal-use-of-images policy to hard, as most images in these articles are informative rather than decorations. Some are of course also needed to give a feeling for the driving environment.

–LPfi (talk) 07:57, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

As a US driver, I think that stop signs and signs for speed limits would be the most immediately necessary. You can't really drive anywhere if you don't know those two. There are others that might be useful (e.g., Yield) but won't turn up as often. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:00, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

EU driver here. Wikipedia has a great w:Comparison of European road signs. Road signs in Europe are indeed pretty consistent and mostly follow the Vienna conventions. I think it would make sense for the individual Driving in country X articles to mostly rely on (and prominently link to) a central article about that (e.g. Driving in Europe or the Rules section of w:Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals), so that the country articles can focus on pointing out where the country diverges from the norm in a way that could cause confusion.

So for example, Driving in Europe would tell you that stop signs are always stop sign-shaped, always stop sign-colored and almost always use the word STOP, whereas Driving in Turkey might tell you that Turkey is pretty much the only country in Europe where they use local language (DUR) instead of STOP. Driving in Ireland might feel tempted to point out that the country uses MUTCD-style warning signs, but that's probably more of a nice to know. Pointing out that they (apparently) use w:Belisha beacons for pedestrian crossings would probably be a good idea, though. Driving in the Netherlands would probably talk about the relevance of blue vs. yellow curbs for parking rather than re-iterating that the prohibitory signs are round?

Looking at existing Driving in X articles, I feel that

• most of the example pictures in Driving_in_France#Traffic rules are unnecessary, as they are no different from other European countries and thus redundant to Driving in Europe (currently not linked).
• Driving in Portugal#Road signs contains so many redundant examples that it's difficult to identify the ones that are specific to Portugal.
• Driving in Sweden#Road signs and Driving in the United Kingdom#Road signs are mostly redundant too, but at least they stick to the important ones.
• I don't know how I feel about the use of miniature versions of road signs in lists in Driving in Norway#Rules and regulations and Driving in Iceland#Rules and regulations.

The other articles listed in Driving in Europe#Countries loo fine to me. Links to Driving in Europe are largely missing, though. El Grafo (talk) 14:49, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

Australian driver here. Our signage is very similar to US signage, but with four major exceptions:

• we have give way signs as opposed to yield signs
• passing cars is called overtaking as passing is only used when you pass cyclists
• signs that are only used RHS countries are flipped (e.g. roundabout signs)
• our speed signs is a mix of both US and EU speed signs; we have that white background but use the red circle (a sign in the NT for ref)

Sometimes we do have our own minor modifications, such as exit signs (cf. US and Aus (specifically Qld)), but whenever I travel to the US, I've never had an issue with understanding signage. For the record, from my limited experience in NZ, they look very similar to Australian signs but with a few minor differences.

In Europe, were very different to what I saw in Aus or the US, but thankfully due to standardised signs, I did not have a problem when travelling in different countries (the signs in Norway, albeit different were very similar to the signs in France). However, most EU signs were self-explanatory, so for the most part, comprehending them wasn't a problem. In South and Southeast Asia, they weren't standardised, but they were very similar.

Re WhatamIdoing's comment: I understand speed signs (though they're pretty much the same everywhere outside the US, Canada and maybe Liberia), aren't stop signs the same, octagonal sign everywhere? I've yet to see a stop sign that isn't red and octagonal. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 00:57, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

What's this?

Most places are using red octagons, frequently even with the English word "STOP", but not quite everywhere. Even in places where the red octagon is common, there may be a few old signs that haven't quite been replaced yet or the occasional variation, like Hawaii's blue stop signs. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:56, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

After doing more digging, it seems Cuba's stop sign is also triangular (like Japan's), but if a country uses the standard octagonal sign, wouldn't it simply make more sense to write that in plain text? (e.g. New Zealand's stop sign is exactly the same as in Australia or the United States or something like that) --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 04:07, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

It seems stop signs are among the most standardized signs worldwide, both in areas that use Vienna convention and MUTCD-style signs. I'd go so far to say that they are not worth mentioning (let alone showing) at all unless they actually diverge from that de-facto norm (red and white octagon). Interestingly enough, you can actually find the Cuban design in the w:Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals as an alternative design. El Grafo (talk) 08:58, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

The "Cuban design" is (or was) a fairly common alternative. It was being installed in the UK up to 1975, and in Italy to 1990. AlasdairW (talk) 22:06, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

Worst drivers or traffic?

For whatever it might be worth, I was once part of a discussion of what country had the world's most chaotic traffic or craziest drivers. This was at a party in 1980s Saudi Arabia where most of the crowd were expat English teachers, and most had lived in a few other countries. Everyone agreed that Saudi traffic was often crazy, & nothing in Europe, North America, North Africa, China, or Japan even came close.

Only two places that anyone in the crowd had visited were considered crazier than Saudi, Iran & Nigeria. No-one had been to both so we could not decide who was worst. Pashley (talk) 17:31, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Vietnam, Indonesia and India have pretty crazy traffic too. I'd say crazier than China. The dog2 (talk) 18:41, 26 October 2023 (UTC)