Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions


The Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions is the law that sets out the design and conditions of use of official traffic signs that can be lawfully placed on or near roads in Great Britain and the Isle of Man. The regulations came into effect in 1965, and were the result of the review of British road signage carried out by the Worboys Committee.

Versions

The TSRGD came into force on 1 March 1957. A new edition was issued in 1964 to implement the re-signing recommendations of the Worboys Committee of 1963, with signage designs and typeface developed by Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert taking effect from 1 January 1965. Since 1964, the TSRGD has been revised and re-issued several times to introduce new signage rules and features reflecting changes in road operations.
Regulations introduced in 1994 included provisions for optional metric supplementary indications on height-restriction signs. This was followed in 2002 by provisions for optional metric supplementary indications on width-restriction signs.
Minor updates are made between full revisions to introduce new signs and markings. For example, the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2008 introduced just one new sign, the combined "speed-limit repeater" roundel and "traffic-camera" symbol on a rectangular plate. The Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2011 introduced portable, temporary pedestrian crossings. The Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2011, amongst many minor changes, provided for an optional dual-units height restriction warning triangle, changes to cycleway signage to allow estimated journey times to be flagged and the discontinuation of the use of the symbol "T" to mean tonnes on weight limit signs.
The current edition of the regulations is the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2016, which came into force on 22 April 2016, with minor amendments in England and Wales in 2017.
Earlier versions were:
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    ''Traffic Signs Manual''

The Traffic Signs Manual is a companion guide to the TSRGD which provides guidance to highway engineers about how and where to use traffic signs, including the size of sign to use. It was first issued in 1965 in a loose-leaf binder and was continuously updated. Individual chapters were also published in book form and these became the only format from 1980 onwards.

Chapters

The manual is split into eight chapters, though chapter 2 is, as of 2025, still in progress. Chapter 8 is further divided into three parts with part 1 being the design, part 2 being the operations and part 3 providing changes used to prescribe traffic signs since the TSRGD was overhauled in 2016.
  • Chapter 1: Introduction
  • Chapter 2: Informatory signs
  • Chapter 3: Regulatory signs
  • Chapter 4: Warning signs
  • Chapter 5: Road markings
  • Chapter 6: Traffic control
  • Chapter 7: Design of traffic signs
  • Chapter 8: Road works and temporary situations
  • *Part 1: Design
  • *Part 2: Operations
  • *Part 3: Update