Street Signs, Part II

Dave beat me to this one, but I have more to say, so I'll tell the story anyway. What we figured was a "Drive On Road" sign was a blue circle with a white arrow, pointing down and to the left. The sign is almost always positioned much lower than any other sign, and it typically sits in a divider in the road and points to the lane you're supposed to drive in. The American equivalent is the "Keep Right" signs we have in spots where people can turn into a divided road. The purpose is to keep you from accidentally going down the wrong lane and ending up going the wrong way on the wrong side of the street.

But these blue arrows are easily the most common street signs in New Zealand. England has the exact same sign, and it's also very common, but New Zealand has these all over the place. Sometimes one isn't enough, and they'll put two in, one right on top of the other. At one spot I saw *four* in the same spot -- two on one signpost, and two on another signpost just behind and to the left of it. The most common place you see these is when entering an intersection with a roundabout -- a wedge of a meridian appears between the two lanes in the road so as to start you going around the roundabout properly and to divide traffic coming onto the roundabout from traffic coming off it. But we saw these signs elsewhere, too. At one point I saw two down-right-pointing arrows on the left curb (that would be "kerb," as they spell it there -- yet another thing that reminded me of England), which indicated, as far as I could tell, "don't drive on sidewalk." Even Brunnen-G couldn't figure out what that was for.

Hence our interpretation of "Drive On Road."

Street Markings

In America, white lines mean that the lane on the other side is travelling the same direction you are. Yellow lines mean that the lane on the other side is travelling the opposite direction that you are. Consequently, a white dotted line means that the two lanes on either side of the line are travelling the same direction, and you may switch lanes freely, as you wish. A yellow dotted line means that the lane across it is travelling in the opposite direction, but you may switch into it for the purpose of passing when there is no oncoming traffic. A double yellow line means that there is an oncoming traffic lane, and you shouldn't pass. A double white line, though rare, means that you shouldn't switch lanes even though both lanes are going the same direction.

In New Zealand, it's not so simple. When we were driving around the Waitakere, I noticed that the two lane road, one lane going in each direction, was, at different times, divided by: a double yellow line, a single solid white line, and a single dotted white line. It was so very bizarre to be driving on a road with a single white line and having traffic coming the other way.

"What's a solid white line mean?" I asked.

Brunnen-G looked blankly and said, after a moment of thought, "It means the middle of the road."

Come to find out, a dotted white means you can pass, a solid white means you can pass with caution, and a double yellow means don't pass at all. In situations where one side can pass and the other cannot, you have a solid yellow line on the side that can't and a dotted white line on the side that can. In America, we have the same notation, except that both lines would be yellow.

There is also a long dotted yellow line. If a dotted white and a long dotted yellow line are next to each other, then the length of one long yellow dot extends from the beginning of one of the white dots to the end of the next white dot. Then the second yellow dot and the third white dot start at the same spot.

A long dotted yellow means "about to change to solid yellow, so if you're going to pass, do it now."

The long dotted yellow seems like a neat idea, although we've survived without it long enough, but the crazy color scheme never did stop messing me up. The thing is, if there are multiple lanes going the same direction, those are divided by dotted white lines also, and so you just have to know by context whether you've got oncoming traffic in the other lane or not. To an American, of course, the instinct was to think that none of it was ever oncoming, which would have been a dangerous assumption to make.