What do these road signs show?

Explanation

Pulling off onto the roadside is dangerous because of repair work on it.

The red-bordered triangle with a worker symbol is a roadworks warning, but it is the plate beneath it that gives the answer: the image of a vehicle whose nearside wheels have dropped onto dug-up, uneven ground means a dangerous shoulder — pulling off onto the shoulder is unsafe because of work in progress on it. The picture confirms this: the carriageway is open and its asphalt sound, but a loader is working exactly on the right-hand shoulder and its surface is strewn with earth and gravel.

The safety reason matters more than the wording of the sign. A shoulder under repair may be dug out, soft, or at a sharp difference in level from the asphalt. If you drop a wheel onto such a shoulder at speed, the friction on the two sides of the vehicle suddenly becomes asymmetric, the vehicle is pulled towards the shoulder, and a hasty attempt to correct with the steering can end in a swerve into the opposing lane or a rollover. So here you should not leave the asphalt to make room for the vehicle behind, or for a brief stop, or to let someone past; just reduce speed and stay on the carriageway.

The general rule for this kind of question: when there is a plate beneath the sign, an answer that ignores the plate is wrong. A plate always makes the sign's meaning more precise and more limited.

• This sentence merely repeats the meaning of the triangle above and drops the plate; whereas the question asks about "these signs", and the hazard announced is specifically on the shoulder, not on the carriageway.

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