Co-op Insurance and The Hub have recently published the results of a survey relating to people’s knowledge of road signs. 2,500 people were took part, although you can still take part in the quiz here.
The quiz will make a note of your gender, age and location in order to compare the results. This then provided an insight into driver knowledge of road signs in a variety of countries that us Brits are likely to drive in.
The data showed some rather interesting results, the first of which is that older people tended to score higher than younger people in the tests. The reason for this? Well that’s rather tougher to glean, but it could be down to a simple lack of experience, or indeed a more risk averse attitude that older drivers have. It also fits with the general car insurance concept of ‘younger means greater risk’. There’s a good reason why premiums drop as you age!
It was also apparent that it didn’t matter where in the UK you live, apart from the East of the UK. It would seem those in the East really do know better, with a 21% greater score on average than the rest of the UK! The worst area for overall score was Northern Ireland, scoring an average of 5.66 out of 10. This was almost 10% below the national average score.
It is not unsurprising that some countries have less familiar and therefore trickier to understand road signs. Iceland, Finland and Sweden were challenging, whilst our European relatives in Italy, France and Austria had higher scoring. Could this be down to the fact that we tend to travel to these areas of Europe more often and therefore are more familiar with them?
The debate will continue with regard to gender – men scored 11% higher on average than women, whilst overall men were 73% more likely to score the maximum of 10 out of 10 compared to women. Make of this what you will – we absolutely refuse to draw any conclusions about this one. Why not test yourself against your nearest and dearest?
The survey results showed that men North West over the age of 65 were the absolute best performers, with an average score of 8.14 out of 10. The worst performers were women aged 26 to 30 in the South West, with an average score of 4.25 out of 10. These two groups could maybe help each other out!
We tried out the survey and managed to score a better than average 7 out of 10. Better than the ‘worst performers’ but not quite as good as the ‘best performers’. We clearly hit quite close to a middling score. What did we take away from this? Put simply, if you are going to go abroad, make sure that you know your road signs. Not only does your safety depend on it, but other road users depend on YOU to know what you are doing.
Signs that you think you recognise may mean something else when abroad, or a sign could be completely alien altogether. It’s worth brushing up on the destination country of your choice, it could save you a heavy penalty. Not only that, but safe driving is good driving. We at Car Articles always advocate having a good knowledge of the road, whether that’s here in the UK or on foreign soil.
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