follows therefore reflects not only more than eighteen months' experience of the Preston By-Pass, but also some twelve months' experience of the London-Yorkshire Motorway.
5. Our interim report was not published, but we understand it is probable that this final report will be. It accordingly goes over the ground already covered in the interim report and also contains our recommendations for signs for which there were no counterparts on the Preston By-Pass and which were therefore not included in the interim report-such as signs for service areas, telephones and junctions of two motorways. If this final report is not to be published you may feel it wise to make some public pronouncement outlining the essential differences between the new motorways and the national road system to which the public is accustomed. We believe that this should be seriously considered in view of the education needed—even for experienced drivers before the tempo of the motorways can be properly absorbed. Similarly, if our advice to you to reduce the number of place-names and route-numbers shown in any one motorway sign is taken, it may well be wise to explain to the motoring public the reason for such a decision .
Method of Work
6. Our first step was to consider whether the present standard system of direction signposting as laid down in the Ministry's Traffic Signs Regulations, 1957, could be adopted for use on the motorways . We came to the conclusion that this type of sign would be completely inadequate under motorway conditions and that the problems of layout, lettering and colour must be examined afresh.
7. We asked the representative organisations listed in Appendix I for initial opinions on the principles which should be adopted in the new signs. We were impressed by the considerable degree of unanimity which this consultation revealed, as a result of which our recommendations are substantially in line with the great majority of views expressed.
8. We familiarised ourselves with the codified rules for up-to-date signing practice on comparable roads in the U.S.A. and in Europe, and four of our members made a personal inspection of the signs on motorways in Belgium, Holland and North-West Germany. We have been fully aware of the fact that it is not enough merely to drive on foreign motorways to understand all the complex problems of traffic control and the avoidance of misunderstanding and accidents. It is for this reason that we have attached so much importance to our consideration of the foreign systems, as codified, for they have been evolved in the light of practical experience of the peculiar conditions inevitable on motorways, experience which was not available, except vicariously, to ourselves or to any of the expert bodies in this country whose advice we sought. The American and European sign-posting systems have much in common, but in detail our recommendations are closer to European practice.
9. At an early stage in our work we became convinced that the detailed design of the lettering, layout, symbols, arrows and other features of the signs we now
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