Computational Intelligence in Traffic Sign Recognition

Appendix 1

Traffic on road may consists of pedestrians, cyclists, motor–cycles, ridden or herded animals and vehicles. The rules on the road are both the traffic laws and the informal rules that may be developed over time to facilitate the orderly and timely flow of traffic. Rules on the road are the basic practices and procedures that road users follow, they manage interactions with other vehicles and pedestrians. In 1968 the Europe countries signed an international treaty, called the Vienna convention on road traffic, for the basic traffic rules. The aim of standardizing traffic regulations in participating countries in order to facilitate international road traffic and to increase road safety. A part of this treaty defined the traffic signs and signals. As a result, in Europe the traffic signs are well standardized, although not all countries are participants of these rules and local variations in practice may be found (see Figure 22). Since language differences can create difficulties to understanding, international signs using symbols instead of words have been developed in Europe and in most countries of the world. Annexe 1 of the Vienna convention on road traffic distinguishes eight different signs [85]:

1. 
   Danger warning signs.
   
2. 
   Priority signs.
   
3. 
   Prohibition signs.
   
4. 
   Mandatory signs.
   
5. 
   Special regulation signs.
   
6. 
   Information, facilities, or service signs.
   
7. 
   Direction, position, or indication signs.
   
8. 
   Additional panels.
   

These eight signs differ in their shapes and colours. Triangular shapes are used in warning signs. Prohibition signs are round with a red border. Informative and various other signs are of rectangular shape.

We follow in the Netherlands also the Vienna principle. The directional signs, which has not been coordinated under the principle, has always a blue background colour. The destinations on the signs are white. If the destination is not a town, then the destination is black on a separate white background. All the different signs used in The Netherlands can be found on the following website 84.