Drill the map, not flashcards. Free, no account.
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Have you committed the pedestrian crossing sign stripe counts to memory?
Can you guess which countries use each of the three guardrail types?
Can you guess which countries use each of the different bollard types?
Which German states build with the A profile, and which with the B?
A chevron sign is the arrow board on the outside of a bend, and its two colours are a country clue you can read at speed and from a distance. There are only a handful of combinations in use across Europe, most countries never mix them, and several combinations belong to one or two countries alone. This page lists every one of them, and the game drills them until the colour pair is enough.
A chevron sign warns that the road turns, and it is put where a driver will see it: on the outside of the curve, facing oncoming traffic, usually several in a row through the bend. The sign is a plain background carrying one or more arrowheads, and the two colours are chosen nationally.
That makes it one of the cheapest clues on the board. You do not have to read anything, get close to anything, or wait for a car to pass. A corner at the edge of the frame is enough, and unlike a bollard the colours survive being blurry.
Say the colours out loud in this order: arrow on background. Red on white is not the same clue as white on red, and the pair is the whole answer.
Two habits worth building. Watch out for the yellow family, because a faded white board in low sun reads as yellow and vice versa. And check more than one sign where you can: the colour is national, but a temporary or roadworks sign can be in a different scheme entirely.
The wide entries at the top of this list are the ones that tell you least. Red on white covers half the continent, so it is a starting point rather than an answer, while the combinations near the bottom are close to a free round.
| Sign | Where you see it |
|---|---|
| Albania, Belgium, Bosnia and Herz., Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey24 countries | |
| Albania, Austria, Belarus, Estonia, Hungary, Italy, Russia, Ukraine8 countries | |
| Albania, Greece, Italy, Liechtenstein, Malta, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom8 countries | |
| Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Turkey7 countries | |
| Austria, Croatia, Montenegro, San Marino4 countries | |
| Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia4 countries | |
| Andorra, France, Spain3 countries | |
| Luxembourg, Sweden2 countries | |
| Sweden1 country |
Some countries run two schemes side by side, often an older one being replaced or a motorway scheme that differs from the ordinary road network. Seeing one of these is not a mistake; the game accepts the country for any of its designs.
A northern and Atlantic pattern, and a spread-out list. Those countries look nothing like each other once you have a road sign or a plate in frame, so the chevron does most of the work and the second clue finishes it.
Rare, and worth learning for that reason alone: three neighbours in one block. Blue is the giveaway that you are in the southwest corner of the continent.
One country, and nowhere else in this game. See it and the round is over, which is the whole argument for learning the rare schemes before the common ones.
They mark a bend. A chevron sign is placed on the outside of a curve facing the traffic that is about to take it, usually as a run of several signs through the corner, so a driver can see where the road goes before the headlights reach it.
Red on white is by far the most common, and the rest of the continent is split between white on red, white on black, black on white, red on yellow, white on blue, yellow on black, yellow on blue and yellow on red. The table on this page lists which countries use each.
Yes, with one caveat. The scheme is set nationally and rarely changes, so the colour pair is trustworthy, but a dozen countries use more than one scheme and the most common pair covers half of Europe. Treat a chevron as the clue that cuts the map down, not always the one that names the country.
Compare it against something else white in the frame, such as the road markings or another sign. In low sun a white board can read as cream, and a genuinely yellow board stays yellow next to a white line.
The other roadside clues have games of their own: European Bollards, European Guardrails and European Pedestrian Signs.
