I’ve zoomed out a bit so that you can see two nearby examples. For those not using the link, it shows a divided highway with three lanes on each side. On one side, in a couple of places there are three arrows side by side, one in each lane, pointing straight down the road in the direction of travel.
These examples are on an unremarkable and not especially busy stretch of road, not particularly close to an exit. The only feature of any note in the immediate vicinity is a small overhead bridge.
So what’s the point of the arrows? To remind stray tourists that we drive on that side of the road in this country? To encourage people to stay in lane? If so, why? As I say, congestion is rare on this particular stretch of road.
Given the large number of complete idiot drivers we have on the roads here, I’d hazard a guess that they’re markings on a motorway to let drivers know which direction they should be driving in. You wouldn’t believe the number of “confused” people who end up going down the wrong carriageway. Apparently they need to be reminded.
It’s coming up to an offramp. It’s indicating that all three lanes are currently ‘straight ahead’ lanes.
If you move the google map over to the west, eventually the left hand lane gets a new sort of arrorw, the ‘this lane is for both turning left and going straight ahead’.
You also see them at traffic lights, e.g. indicating a lane is a ‘right turn only’ lane.
I’m really surprised to hear the US doesn’t have these!
But if you continue West, the next exit has no such arrows preceding it. The opposite carriageway doesn’t have them either, although there are dots occasionally (which I don’t think are related and I’d WAG are to indicate drainage channels or pipelines, or are used for traffic measurement). In general, I don’t think these parallel arrows are a common road marking on UK motorways.
As sandra_nz said, it is to indicate that all lanes are for going straight ahead prior to the junction. I think the idea may be to discourage drivers in the left-most lane from moving across to the middle lane just because there is a junction ahead.
The exit is at least a couple of miles away from the last set of arrows. There’s only two sets of arrows as well, spaced a couple of hundred metres apart from one another. Why no more closer to the exit?
And as I suggested, they’re by no means used before all motorway/dual carriageway exits. I’m not going to scour Google Maps now, but I think they’re a rarity, and may have nothing to do with exits.
I’m with Usram. They don’t seem to be in the normal place for such markings. These are usually seen when one lane hives off completely, rather than an exit sliproad being added. The next junction is miles away, and it’s a regular exit. 'Tis very odd. Perhaps it’s a legacy of some contraflow roadworks?
Quite a few motorway (or, in this case, three-lane dual carriageway) junctions are of the type where the left-hand lane “peels off” from the main carriageway, so if you want to go straight on then you need to be in the middle or right-hand lanes.
Arrows are often painted on the road in the approach to the slip road (off ramp), after the sign indicating the junction, to indicate to drivers which type of junction it is and so whether or not they need to change lanes.
Where the left lane does “peel off”, rather than painting arrows, it’s more usual to paint the number of the road in the relevant lane, e.g. see here. In the M3 carriageway heading NE (the top one), the lanes are labelled, from left to right, “M25”, “M25 & M3” and “M3”. (It’s a bit hard to read as there is not very high-res imagery). So if you’re in the left lane you canb only turn off, the middle lane is for either, and the right lane is for straight ahead only. Just beyond that, the lane markings change to indicate that the left lane will soon be splitting off.
Not odd at all. The next junction isn’t “miles away” - it’s about two-thirds of a mile after the second set of arrows, and a little more from the first set. In other words, the arrows appear soon after the first junction warning sign, which is usually 1 mile before the junction. It’s so that when drivers see the sign, they don’t pull over to the middle lane unnecessarily thinking that the left lane will take them off the main road.
My guess is that they are used here specifically because it is fairly unusual for an A road to have three lanes, whereas on a motorway you would expect three lanes to continue past the junction.
If you go back a few miles up the road, you can see similar markings.
Here, the left lane will split from the main road, so the arrows show you that you have to move over to keep straight on. Scroll west and the arrows repeat, together with the road numbers.
A bit further on, here are similar arrows to those in the OP, only there are only two lanes this time. Both lanes can be used to go straight on, so no need to change lanes if you want to stay on the A3.
I’m clueless as to the arrows in the middle of nowhere, probably put there by mistake.
The dots or squares are for police to assess your speed and are placed a certain distance before a bridge or other significant landmark. If you transit between the points under a certain time, you are exceeding the speed limit.
These are largely redundant now we have speed cameras.
Those arrows are the usual lane advisories that you get near lots of junctions. In the location in the OP, if you scroll northeast you will notice that there are at least four sets of the arrows I am talking about, starting about 3 miles before the exit which is well before the road signs indicating the upcoming exit. Then they suddenly stop well before the exit, and are not seen elsewhere on either carriageway, as far as I can see.
But you have got me thinking about the A3, and I have a theory now - this stretch of road is the A3 heading out of London, just after it moves up to national speed limit. Before that, the A3 is limited to 50mph or lower, and switches between two and three lanes, with losts of junctions where lanes become exit-only and so have the sort of advisory arrows we have been talking about. Perhaps the purpose of the three “straight on” arrows is to alert drivers that they are now on a normal stretch of multi-lane road, and may treat all lanes equally from here on. I.e. don’t worry about switching lanes, as you have to do on the suburban sections of the A3.
Probably right. As I said, it’s quite unusual to have a three-lane dual carriageway on an A road, so I guess the arrows are meant to be reassurance that the left lane isn’t suddenly going to disappear at the next junction. Which is sort of what I said.
I could waste hours looking at the Google Maps aerial pics
(I wonder what happened with this little stub of slip road?)
This sounds like the right answer to me. Here they are on the A12 when it acquires a third lane. And this case doesn’t fit in with Usram’s theory above, because at this point the road has been a continuous 70mph dual carriageway for about 50 miles.
Not on motorways, no - because in that case, such indications are on overhead gantries instead. I’m pretty sure there’s one east of the M11 junction with three arrows pointing down at the three lanes, each simply indicating ‘M25’, because before the junction any continuing M25 traffic has to move to the middle lane and the left one peels off.
Irritatingly I drove this stretch last November, but can’t remember anything about it, other than it was driving hell as I approached London; so frustrating.
