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Can you guess which countries use each of the three guardrail types?
Which German states build with the A profile, and which with the B?
Have you committed the pedestrian crossing sign stripe counts to memory?
Which countries use the different chevron types?
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A bollard is the marker post standing at the edge of the road, and in Europe it is one of the fastest country clues there is. Almost every country picked its own design and then kept it, so a single post at the roadside narrows a European road to a handful of candidates before you have looked at the language, the lines or the licence plates. This page is the full list, and the game drills it.
Bollards are the short posts that mark the edge of the carriageway, spaced out
along the verge on almost every road outside a town. Officially they are
delineator posts or guide posts (Leitpfosten in German, balise in French),
and their job is to hold a retroreflective panel where a headlight will catch
it, so the edge of the road stays visible at night and under snow.
Two things make them such a good clue. They are set nationally, by the road authority rather than by a region or a contractor, so a design does not change as you cross a county line. And they are everywhere: a rural road that gives you nothing else will still give you a bollard every twenty metres or so.
Four features, roughly in the order they are worth checking:
Every design below is drawn twice, because the two sides of the road do not carry the same post. In most of Europe the reflector facing you is red or orange on the right-hand side of the road and white on the left, so the pair you see is one bollard from the near verge and the same bollard from the far one. A few countries change the shape instead of the colour, which is worth knowing before you decide two posts are different designs.
Read it as a lookup table: find the design, and the countries next to it are the answer. The designs shared by three or four countries are the ones to learn first, because they are the rounds where a bollard alone will not settle it.
| Design | Where you see it |
|---|---|
| Albania, Italy, Malta, San Marino4 countries | |
| Germany, Luxembourg, Sweden, Switzerland4 countries | |
| Austria, Montenegro, Slovenia3 countries | |
| Bulgaria, Croatia, North Macedonia3 countries | |
| Estonia, Finland, Sweden3 countries | |
| Andorra, Spain2 countries | |
| Czechia, Slovakia2 countries | |
| Estonia, Sweden2 countries | |
| Finland, Latvia2 countries | |
| Kosovo, Serbia2 countries | |
| Kosovo, Serbia2 countries | |
| Liechtenstein, Switzerland2 countries | |
| Russia, Ukraine2 countries | |
| Austria1 country | |
| Belgium1 country | |
| Cyprus1 country | |
| Denmark1 country | |
| France1 country | |
| Germany1 country | |
| Greece1 country | |
| Hungary1 country | |
| Iceland1 country | |
| Ireland1 country | |
| Latvia1 country | |
| Lithuania1 country | |
| Netherlands1 country | |
| Netherlands1 country | |
| North Macedonia1 country | |
| Norway1 country | |
| Poland1 country | |
| Portugal1 country | |
| Romania1 country | |
| Russia1 country | |
| Russia1 country | |
| Spain1 country | |
| Turkey1 country | |
| Ukraine1 country | |
| United Kingdom1 country |
These are the countries where a single remembered design will catch you out: an older post still standing beside its replacement, or different posts on different classes of road. The game asks about all of them, so a round in one of these countries can be answered by more than one picture.
A single wide band well below the head rather than a reflector up at the top, on a post noticeably broader than its neighbours use. No other design in the game shares it, so this is a one-post answer.
Here the reflector shape is the variable rather than its colour: one tall rectangle on one side of the road, two stacked circles on the other. Four countries share this post, so it narrows rather than answers, and you go looking for a plate, a sign or a guardrail next.
Colour on the body itself, which almost no other design in the game has, with the reflector set inside the red. One country, a lot of road, and a cheap point once you have it.
The marker posts along the edge of the road. Officially they are delineator posts or guide posts; every GeoGuessr player calls them bollards. Because each country picks its own design and keeps it for decades, they are one of the strongest country clues available on a rural road.
Most of them. In the table on this page, every design with a single country next to it is a giveaway: see that post and the round is over. The rest are shared by two to four countries, usually neighbours.
Because the post on one side of the road is not the post on the other. In most of Europe the reflector facing traffic is red or orange on the right-hand side of the road and white on the left, so the pair shown is one design seen from each verge.
Often, but not always. Several designs are shared by three or four countries, and a number of countries use more than one design, so a bollard usually narrows the answer to a short list. Pair it with chevrons, guardrails and pedestrian crossing signs and the list closes fast.
Drill them against a map. Reading a list is recognition, and what you need in a round is recall under time pressure, which is what the game on this page trains: it shows a design, you click the country, and it tells you what you missed.
The neighbouring clues have games of their own: European Chevrons, European Guardrails and European Pedestrian Signs.
