What the sign and the sign below it warns you about:

Explanation

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

Read the two elements of the image together. Above, a triangle with a red border and the symbol of a worker with a shovel: the "roadworks" warning sign. Below, a rectangular supplementary plate showing a vehicle whose right-hand edge has sunk into a broken, uneven shoulder. The combination of the two means: ahead the road is under repair, and moving out onto the shoulder is dangerous.

The governing rule is the classification of signs. A triangle with a red border only warns; it never on its own prohibits anything. The plate beneath it merely makes the subject of the warning more precise, rather than creating a new prohibition. So any option beginning with the words "is prohibited" is suspect before you read the rest of it.

The safety reason is physical too: within a repair zone the shoulder is usually dug up, gravelled or soft and sits at a different height from the carriageway. If you take your right wheels onto such a shoulder at speed, one side of the vehicle finds less grip, the vehicle is pulled towards the shoulder, and trying to correct with a sudden steering input ends in a rollover or a swerve into the opposing lane. That is why you must reduce speed, stay on the carriageway, and find a safer place for an emergency stop.

• A triangle with a red border only warns and imposes no prohibition; a stopping prohibition is announced by a circular sign, not by a roadworks warning sign. • This too attributes a prohibition to a warning sign; besides, the difference between "standing" and "stopping" is not the subject of this sign at all, and the plate beneath it is about the shoulder being dangerous, not about permission to remain there.

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