Every other sign in this app is a picture you can learn. A direction board is not — the name on it changes at every junction, so there is nothing to memorise. The colour of the board is the message, and there are only four of them.
Why these signs work differently
A stop sign is the same octagon in Upington as it is in Umlazi. That is what makes the rest of this app possible: you learn the picture once and you know it forever.
Direction boards cannot work that way. The board outside your house carries the name of your suburb, and no other board in the country carries it. There is no picture to learn, and a learner who tries to memorise them is memorising a list that has no end.
So the syllabus does something cleverer. It fixes the colour instead. Whatever the words say, the colour of the board tells you what kind of road is being signposted — and that you can learn in a minute and use for the rest of your driving life.
The rest of this lesson
- The four colours
- Guidance informs — it does not command