Comment by vladvasiliu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vladvasiliu | Hacker News Reader

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> But the concept of a national speed limit and then not marking the speed limit when it's in effect seems brain dead.

Yeah. Have you driven in France? On regular roads, there's no "national speed limit". Depending on the department, it can be 80 or 90 km/h.

> How are you supposed to know what it is if say you just rented a car from the airport?

Nul ne doit ignorer la loi (no one may be ignorant of the law).

> How do you know at a glance if a road is one way?

If there are only two lanes, you look at the line on the left border of the road. If the line is continuous, both lanes go the same way. If it's dashed or there's no line (and your side doesn't have one either) you're on a two-way road.

If there are multiple lanes, there will be a double continuous line separating the ways. The double line can sometimes appear on two-lane roads, it always means the road is two-way.

Yellow markings exist, they usually mean road-work / temporary signaling.

Best rule of thumb: if you're not clearly on a highway, it's very likely a two-way road. Clearly means there's no other separate set of lanes close by. We don't have as much space as in the US where the lanes going the other way are so far away you can barely see them.

> Nul ne doit ignorer la loi (no one may be ignorant of the law).

I got a parking ticket once in a place that had parking signs and a parking meter. Turned out that particular parking meter was only for cars with a specific permit. How could I have known that? Because there was supposed to be a painted 1" green circle around its base. Even if I had known what that meant, the circle had worn away probably years prior. No, there was no mention of these circles or their meaning on any of the parking signs.

Urban street parking in particular can have really confusing signage with all sorts of conditions and exceptions. And, especially where parking is really tight, I often find that I feel I'm missing something if there's actually an open space.

>Nul ne doit ignorer la loi (no one may be ignorant of the law).

Sure, but humans aren't clairvoyant. You can make the effort to look it up, or the road authority can just put up some basic signs.

I agree with you, but that's how things work over here.

To stay on the topic of speed limits, there's a national speed limit for towns / cities, 50 kmph. It's usually not posted as such, but there being a sign with a town name means you must observe that.

Other peculiarities you have to know: when you enter a town, there may be a different speed limit posted than the national limit, typically 30 kmph, very rarely 70. It matters if the speed limit sign is physically attached to the name sign, or if it stands on its own. In the former case, it means that's the speed limit for all the streets of the town. If not, it's the regular limit, meaning until the first intersection, when the default one comes in effect.

The signs are otherwise identical.

While (as a European) I agree with your point regarding speed signs, I think an important point is that there are plenty of traffic laws that differs (even) between EU countries. So when going driving in a foreign country one really should look up at least basic rules beforehand, and speed limits will most likely be front and center.

Note that if you cross a border in Europe (not necessarily in the EU) by car, you will pass a sign [0] giving the default speed limits for each type of road.

[0]https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:National_speed_limit...

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