Highway shield

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A highway shield is a sign used for denoting the route number of a highway. Used extensively in the United States and elsewhere around the world, highway shields usually come in the form of a symbolic shape with the route number enclosed. Since the route number should be the most visible element of the sign, it is usually large, while the other items on the sign are smaller or in contrasting colours. Highway shields are used by travellers, commuters, and all levels of government for identifying, navigating, and organising routes within a county, state, province, or country. Simplified highway shields often appear on maps.

1 United States
2 Alternatives to shields
3 See also
4 References

[edit] United States

The United States' Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices gives standard designs for highways in the Interstate Highway and U.S. route systems. The MUTCD also provides default designs for state highways (the circular highway shield) and county highways. However, states are free to use any design for their numbered routes; as of 2007 only five states use the default shield, with all others using a custom design. Many of these designs are other geometric shapes (like squares and diamonds), outlines of the state boundaries, or a design representing the state (like Pennsylvania's keystone design and Kansas' sunflower).

The Interstate shield is the only trademarked route shield in use in the U.S. (Serial Number 72239199, Registration Number 0835635)^[1].

At one time, U.S. counties also had unique shield designs, though most have phased these out in favor of the MUTCD default, a blue pentagon with yellow text.

[edit] Alternatives to shields

Many countries worldwide, such as the United Kingdom and France, do not use shields, instead relying on plain-text representations of highway numbers. These are sometimes highlighted with a different background color, depending on the class of highway and the context of the sign.