Did you know that there are purely metric signs (without any imperial conversions) on major roads at one hundred metre intervals? If you know this, you are one of the few who do. I am referring to marker posts and driver location signs. These signs are used by the emergency services to help them to locate stranded drivers and are incompatible with the official traffic signs for the general public, which are almost exclusively imperial.
I wrote to my local MP about the failure of the DfT to explain driver location signs and marker posts properly to the general public in the most recent version of the Highway Code, which was published online on 29 January 2022. In Rule 277 of the Code, drivers are given some instructions, so they know what to do in an emergency. One of them relates to marker posts and driver location signs. This one tells drivers to “quote the numbers and letters on marker posts or driver location signs which are located along the edge of the road”. I asked for an explanation from the Secretary of State for Transport for the DfT’s failure to explain the meaning of these numbers and letters in DfT publications intended for the general public, including the Highway Code. Location information is useful to drivers and is there for their benefit. The Wikipedia article about driver location signs quotes the findings of a road users satisfaction survey. It says that “some 59% of respondents had seen such a sign, but 76% of drivers did not know what the signs were for”.
My MP replied to me with a letter from Baroness Vere of Norbiton, Minister for Roads, Buses and Places, saying:
“Driver location signs were introduced at regular intervals along many
motorways and some other roads so that, in the event of a vehicle breakdown
or other emergency, the exact location can be identified quickly. They show
the motorway or road number, the carriageway identifier and a location
reference.
These signs are primarily for the benefit of organisations such as the
emergency services and National Highways rather than the general public.
The Highway Code only includes signs that are most likely to be encountered
by drivers, and is deliberately kept a modest price and size to encourage
maximum sales and usage in the interest of road safety. Information on these
particular signs is included in Know Your Traffic Signs, the companion
document to the Highway Code. Both publications combined provide drivers
with the tools to be able to interpret all traffic signs.”
No. Their purpose is even given in their name. They are “driver” location signs, not “emergency services” location signs. As the AA points out, “They were introduced in early 2003 to give drivers additional information to the motorway marker posts – signs posted every 100 metres showing the directions to the nearest emergency phone.”.
These signs appear at frequent intervals on major roads. Marker posts appear at 100 metre intervals and driver location signs appear at 500 metre intervals. The DfT does not explain what the letters and numbers on these signs mean. So it is unsurprising that there is such widespread ignorance about these signs. It would not take up much more space to explain these signs properly to drivers. The AA gives a good summary of these signs (e.g. see https://www.theaa.com/breakdown-cover/advice/driver-location-signs).
There is a small section on driver location signs in the Know Your Traffic Signs publication on page 143, near the end of the publication in the Miscellaneous Signs category. It says the following about these signs:
“These have been introduced at regular intervals along many motorways and some other roads so that, in the event of a vehicle breakdown or other emergency, the exact location can be identified quickly. They show the motorway or road number, the carriageway identifier and a distance reference.”
Neither the minister nor Know Your Traffic Signs tells the general public that these signs show kilometres. I suspect that if it became common knowledge that they show kilometres, many will ask why it is acceptable to use kilometres on some signs but not on others and the DfT’s arguments against metric signs will collapse. After all, driver location signs, marker posts and distance signs express the distance between one point and another by using numbers in different measurement systems.
After I raised some issues about the reply I got from Baroness Vere of Norbiton, I got the following response from her about these issues:
“The numbers replicate a long-established system of referencing which has, until recently, only been displayed on small roadside marker posts. The referencing system, which was originally developed for road maintenance contractors, is based upon the distance from a fixed origin. In the engineering sector, metric measurements are commonly used and driver location signs use the same motorway referencing system as the distance marker posts. Their primary purpose is to enable drivers, and the emergency services, to rapidly locate the scene of an incident without any confusion.”
They confirm that the DfT has an unofficial policy of using the metric system for professionals and the imperial system for drivers. The consistency in the use of metric units for professionals is welcome. Why can’t the DfT extend this consistency to everyone?
Metric Views 
When will we know who is heading up DfT?
With the right person maybe a publicity campaign can be approved to educate the public about the meaning of the driver location signs. Then maybe this could be parlayed into getting the conversion done of distance signs of all kinds to metric as well as width, height, and length signs to metric only. The last bit will be speed limit signs given their nature both legally and otherwise (need to convert all signs in one go).
I recall that one person in Ireland kept after their equivalent to DfT to align with the rest of the EU by converting road signs to metric until they finally agreed and got the job done. So, there is always hope with a new UK government more interested in aligning with the EU than the last one.
Ezra aka punditgi
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The Baroness is wrong. The “Driver Location Signs” were not “introduced at regular intervals along many
motorways and some other roads so that, in the event of a vehicle breakdown or other emergency…”. They were originally introduced for the purpose of road maintenance so that maintenance crews could easily find the section of road they needed to repair. The units are in metres only because the road crews use metres in their repair operations. It was only later that someone discovered they could be used by the public as a means of emergency crews finding a member of the public in trouble.
I really don’t understand why the public needs to know or care that the units on the signs are in metres. All they need to know is how to communicate the numbers to emergency service so they show up at the right location.
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In the period that followed the Conquest (1066), England had two languages – those that ruled the country spoke Norman-French while the peasants spoke Anglo-Saxon. It seems that the DfT is trying to recreate that sort of scenario with the professionals speaking in terms of metric units while the ordinary motorists use imperial units.
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Daniel said, “The units are in metres only because the road crews use metres in their repair operations.”
Quite so. This, I presume, is the reason why public notices in local newspapers, etc., show dimensions of the extent of planned roadworks exclusively in metres.
Except in this case, these notices are for information for the general public.
“It was only later that someone discovered they could be used by the public” – to identify the extent and location of the road works – information that could be very useful to those living or travelling on the affected stretches.
But it seems that the public are happy to accept these metric measurements.
Daniel asks,”Why does the public need to know or care that the units on the signs are in metres?”
Figures that are meaningful are easier to remember and communicate than figures with no obvious meaning.
I can draw a parallel with telephone numbers. Some organizations use numbers with 0333 codes. Great – you can call them from anywhere in the UK for the price of a local call. But they are not meaningful. Our doctor’s surgery used to have a conventional number – a five-digit code, then two digits to identify the locality, then four more digits. It was necessary to remember only the last four digits; the rest could be deduced from local knowledge. The new 0333 number is difficult to remember.
Baroness Vere talks about the engineering “sector”. In the 1970s, enlightened people were indicating the folly of suggesting that some “sectors” could remain using Imperial in isolation. When are the DFT and the Government going to bring their thinking up to date?
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